Kurapika's ability had diverged slightly from what appeared in the manga, and the biggest differences showed up in his middle finger and pinky.
They were no longer exclusively aimed at the Phantom Troupe.
Instead, they leaned more toward support—because with Ronin, another Kurta, in the picture, Kurapika no longer had to shoulder revenge alone.
As for Kurapika's Specialist ability, that part hadn't changed.
In Scarlet Eyes state, he could still use all six categories at 100%, but in practice the one he used most was still Enhancement.
His fight was already over. Nearby, Neon was also entering her finishing phase.
Neon didn't know her opponent's name, but that didn't stop her from cursing him—she could still "fortune tell" him.
Nen suddenly wrapped around her left hand, and a cute Nen beast—like a little mochi ball with black wings—appeared out of nowhere.
Her pen, guided by the Nen beast, wrote rapidly in the air. One crimson character after another formed from Nen, hanging there like blood.
"Under the moon, the flowing street will become your grave."
A smile tugged at Neon's lips. She didn't even bother to rush in and close distance. Instead, she took a small step back and simply watched Leech.
Leech saw the sudden line of Nen-formed text too.
He didn't understand what it meant, but an ominous feeling rose in his gut.
Neon's gaze shifted—to the heavy truck that had blared its horn earlier.
No one knew what happened, but just as the driver realized he was about to slam into the car ahead, he yanked the wheel hard. Tires shrieked against the pavement, and the truck flipped onto its side.
And it slid—straight toward where Leech was standing.
Leech heard the screeching too. When he turned, the overturned truck was barreling right at him.
His pupils shrank. He moved to leave its path—
But in that exact instant, the ground cracked open—likely from the "mini volcano" Ronin had raised nearby. Leech's forward step landed perfectly into the crack.
His foot stuck for a heartbeat.
Just that heartbeat was enough.
Even as he burst Nen to wrench his foot free, the truck smashed into him.
Neon's hair fluttered in the wind. She never lifted a hand—she simply watched as Leech was carried away by the truck.
"You should've been able to see that line of words. And you still stayed on the street—do you think my curse is a joke?" Neon walked calmly toward the collapsed Leech, who was vomiting blood but not quite dead yet.
If Leech had simply fled into the shops on either side of the street the moment he saw the crimson words, he might have changed his fate.
Because the curse poem clearly said: the street would be his grave.
Leave the street, and he could escape the death line.
Too bad he didn't understand.
"Ronin says my prophecy poems are curses… but honestly, I think curses are pretty great." A smile surfaced on Neon's face.
Lovely Ghostwriter only produced prophecies.
But Neon wasn't using Lovely Ghostwriter right now—
she was using Devil's Ghostwriter.
So the tool writing wasn't the right-hand auto-pencil anymore, but the left-hand pen.
The floating words were danger-red, and after Leech was hit, the text even rippled as if stained with blood.
She was a Specialist.
And she didn't want to fight only by relying on Enhancement like Ronin said. So she had actively developed her Specialist Nen.
She refused to become some "flat-chested loli."
After relentless effort, her right hand remained Lovely Ghostwriter, and its scope changed from only month-long prophecies to also allowing short one-day prophecies.
Neon still couldn't understand the content, no matter whose prophecy it was—she only knew it appeared as a sentence or a few poems.
Her left hand became Devil's Ghostwriter, which could also write words—but those words were a curse.
That curse lasted only three minutes. And if the target could "see" the path of survival inside the curse, they could actively avoid it.
But if they dismissed the curse, misfortune would fall on them—
just like Leech now.
Leech was more out of breath than in, crushed by the truck. Yet Neon still didn't plan to spare him.
She drew a dagger from her waist and, under Leech's unwilling, confused stare, drove it through his skull.
Even so, his brain still didn't impress Neon.
A complete failure—so worthless he didn't even have the value of being collected.
Pure trash.
Neon's gaze shifted from Leech to Bat descending from the sky—and to Worm, who Ronin had smashed into the ground.
Both had non-human traits.
Worm's grotesquely elongated head, far beyond normal proportions, and Bat's literal bat wings—excellent collection material.
Just don't let Ronin ruin them.
Seeing the hole punched through Bat's wing, Neon felt her heart bleed.
"Stop! Wings—don't damage my wings!"
Ronin had no intention of letting Bat live. Even though Bat had come down at Ronin's command, Ronin hadn't even moved yet when Neon's anxious shout came from the other side.
"My wings," huh?
That damn collector instinct again.
Still, Ronin—stone already in hand—didn't fire everything. He only shot a single stone, aiming for Bat's head.
The Nen around Bat's head was like paper. The stone pierced through cleanly.
"So it really wasn't conjured. I thought he was weak because he trained both Conjuration and Emission—two opposing categories. Guess I overestimated him," Ronin muttered, watching Neon sprint over in a panic.
Kurapika walked over as well.
"These guys feel kind of weak. Is the Ten Dons' trump card really only this level?" Kurapika couldn't believe it.
"They have Nen, but they don't have a systematic understanding of it—that's the normal state of ability users outside the Hunter Association," Ronin shrugged.
The Association treated Nen as top-level classified, and the V5 agreed to it.
So in this world, without a teacher, even if someone awakened Nen naturally, they would treat it like a strange superpower.
History recorded some Nen users—but they weren't called Nen users in the records. They were called "supermen," "rulers," "geniuses," "immortals," "psychics," and so on.
Without systematic learning, self-taught ability users easily ended up like Kastro—an Enhancer who trained an ill-fitting Conjuration ability, wasting talent.
And they often had a terrible grasp of the basic applications. They only understood that "wrapping yourself in energy boosts offense and defense," but that was nowhere near enough against real experts.
Most Shadow Beasts were that kind of half-baked.
So in Ronin's view, aside from someone like Owl—whose ability was genuinely valuable—the rest were basically trial stones to test Kurapika and Neon's growth.
Overall, Ronin was satisfied with their performance.
"Bring him. We leave," Ronin said.
Sirens were already sounding in the distance. Ronin sprang up with a few leaps and climbed onto a nearby building.
Kurapika and Neon followed—less smoothly than Ronin, but each with their own method.
~~~
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