Time flew by.
In the blink of an eye, several months passed, and by late August Yorknew had become lively again.
Huge numbers of people poured into the bustling metropolis for the auction.
The city's crime rate kept climbing, but GDP was rising steadily too—the mayor was already grinning from ear to ear.
Crime rate? Whatever. The mafia had control. Even if it spiked through the roof, the mafia would be the first to panic.
After all, the Yorknew auction itself was controlled behind the scenes by the Ten Dons. If there ever came a day when people stopped attending because they were too worried about crime, the first ones to panic would be the mafia—because they were desperate to move stolen goods.
The Troupe entered Yorknew in batches.
Roughly in groups of three.
This time they had two goals: first, find and kill Ronin—the one who had been giving them headaches recently; second, obtain the game Greed Island.
The slaughter in Molding City didn't stop bounty hunters and crime hunters from pursuing the Phantom Troupe.
If anything, the sheer body count pushed the Troupe's already-famous A-rank bounties even higher.
Of course, anyone still daring to hunt the Troupe at this point was a true heavyweight.
And that, precisely, was what made things so troublesome for the Troupe.
Normally, after a group mission, the Troupe would split into small squads and act independently for a while.
This time, the whole group only began splitting up recently—and even that split was temporary. Not long after reaching Yorknew, they would regroup again.
Uvogin had been having a terrible time lately.
His burns had healed, but they left huge scar patches. Combined with hair that still hadn't grown back much, he looked both ugly and ridiculous.
Sensitive as he was, he would suddenly flare into rage.
Even Nobunaga—who teamed with him most often—was starting to get fed up with the hair-trigger brute. Fortunately, the boss had pushed Machi into the team, and with Machi around, Uvogin at least restrained himself a bit.
Because Machi really would tie him up with threads.
Uvogin still hadn't once broken free from Machi's bindings—especially since she liked to "ambush" him while he slept, which only made him even more furious.
And as time passed, his hatred for Ronin only grew stronger by the day.
If he got another chance to meet Ronin, he swore he wouldn't lose like last time.
This time, he wouldn't give Ronin any chance to use those special abilities.
After fighting him again and again, Uvogin had confirmed one thing:
Ronin forming those strange hand signs with his hands was a restriction—part of how his abilities activated.
If he could stop Ronin's hands, he could stop those attacks.
And then it would become pure hand-to-hand.
And in hand-to-hand, Uvogin would still win.
He didn't believe that in three months, Ronin's growth could surpass his. Uvogin had been training like a madman—at least two hundred times harder than ordinary people.
With that kind of grind, his improvement would be unmatched.
Ronin included.
"Don't even think about a one-on-one. You'll die," Machi said coldly, tearing apart Uvogin's fantasy.
They hadn't even met Ronin yet, but Machi could read the "single-cell" thoughts right off Uvogin's self-confident face.
After nearly being burned to death last time, he still hadn't learned.
Machi was genuinely worried that Ronin would dangle a little bait, and Uvogin would charge into a trap without hesitation.
Were Enhancers all this stubborn? Machi couldn't help complaining internally.
"I know," Uvogin grumbled, shaking the arm that had been crudely reattached.
It was Machi and Franklin's handiwork, though Uvogin thought it was unnecessary.
Numbers were tattooed on the arm—Franklin's mark. And there was even some aura inside it, also Franklin's.
A car passed the three of them on the roadside.
The driver was a tough-looking muscular young man. In the passenger seat sat a pink-haired girl, and in the back seat was a blond girl wearing a hat.
Uvogin instinctively glanced at the car, but didn't recognize any faces. He scratched his head, puzzled.
Beep—
A horn cut off his urge to chase the car.
It was a heavy truck. As it rolled past, Uvogin and the others were gone.
When the truck driver glanced at the rearview mirror, he froze for a second.
Did he hit them?
He didn't even consider braking. If they really got hit, that was their "good luck."
Maybe they'd get isekai'd into another world!
The driver continued listening to the radio reading an isekai novel, privately wondering if "getting hit by a truck" really sent you to another world… then decided he still wanted to live.
What he didn't know was that Uvogin and the others were sitting on top of the truck's cargo, riding it into the city.
"Was that Uvogin's group? Only three?" In the car that Uvogin had instinctively looked at, Ronin—at the wheel—canceled his Transformation Jutsu.
In Neon's hand, an automatic pencil appeared. The pencil moved through the air, and Nen wrote a line of words in midair:
"Frost Moon will sink together with Crimson."
"I don't get it." Neon shrugged and dismissed the ability.
In that instant, she had done a short fortune-telling on Uvogin, with a one-day time frame—but she couldn't understand what she'd produced.
"'Frost Moon' is Uvogin's month in the Troupe—No. 11, November," Ronin interpreted, then turned to Neon, revealing his crimson Sharingan. "And 'Crimson' is obviously me."
"'Sink together' probably means we die together—mutual destruction?" Kurapika interpreted the second half.
"Then there's probably an ambush." Ronin added. "Meaning those three walking around so brazenly are bait—or Uvogin has decided on a suicide trade."
"Most likely the latter," Kurapika nodded. "Post-mortem Nen? That's… interesting."
"No idea. But after the burns last time, if his hatred for me can't end with dying together—or torturing me—then when I kill him, that hatred could become obsession," Ronin analyzed smoothly.
Enhancers tended to get stuck in ruts—like Gon.
Ronin wasn't afraid of the likely case; he was afraid of the worst case.
So if he was going to finish Uvogin, it had to be absolute—every scenario considered, every comeback route sealed.
"Then we shouldn't touch him today." Kurapika said. "No rush. We'll have chances."
Neon's short fortune was only valid for one day.
But on September 1, she could divine Uvogin again. Without knowing his exact birth date and blood type, she could still only produce a one-day prophecy.
And after September, even if she learned his information, she wouldn't be able to divine him again.
That was the short-term divination ability Neon could actively use after mastering Lovely Ghostwriter.
~~~
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