The fishhook tore through flesh and lodged itself in Phinks's cheek. The intense pain made even Phinks's vision go black for a moment.
But more importantly, blood began gushing madly from the wound the hook had ripped open, forming a crimson ribbon that streamed straight into Blinky's mouth.
And as he rapidly lost blood, Phinks felt waves of weakness wash over him.
Was he going to die here?
The fishing line pulled taut. Phinks's face was yanked upward, and a vicious gleam flashed through his eyes. He raised his hand and grabbed the line.
But before he could pull it, he hesitated.
Because even if he tore the line off, it still wouldn't stop his blood from being drained.
Death already seemed inevitable.
Yet in the next second, Phinks's arm suddenly erupted with strength. He forcibly ripped the fishhook out of his cheek, tearing away half of his own face along with it.
But at that moment, he no longer cared about any of that. Even the pain seemed to become meaningless.
Phinks clenched his fist and began rotating his arm.
He wasn't attacking.
He was charging up.
If this was already a death sentence, then what was there left to think about? Using the last of his strength to take one or two of them with him was what he should do.
"He's going all out," Kurapika said, his voice unusually calm.
At the same time, the card he drew from his binder made him look like the most hateful devil in Phinks's eyes.
It was Accompany.
Even though activating Accompany would include Phinks within its range, during the transfer process, he wouldn't be able to attack anyone who was also under Accompany's effect.
But the blood constantly spraying from his body wouldn't stop just because of Accompany.
They were going to make him watch himself die.
Even Shizuku couldn't help pushing up her glasses when she saw the spell card in Kurapika's hand. He really had chosen the cruelest possible spell card.
But thinking about it carefully, there didn't seem to be any spell card more suitable for the current situation.
How long would it take to suck Phinks dry?
Shizuku silently calculated.
Maybe only two Accompany cards would be enough. They wouldn't even need to fly the maximum distance; flying to the starting point would be sufficient.
Phinks stopped moving.
His final deathbed burst had been forcibly choked off. The pain on his face made his mind abnormally clear.
But it was precisely in that clarity that he couldn't find any way to break out of the current situation.
That was what made him despair the most.
And in the middle of that despair, another streak of light appeared in the sky. When it fell, the person who stepped out was Ronin.
At that moment, Phinks collapsed onto the ground, a bitter smile on the only half of his face that remained.
The only possible reason Ronin had appeared here was that Feitan had lost too.
That guy had probably been prepared to go all in from the very beginning. He just hadn't expected to lose so easily. From the look of Ronin, only the corner of his clothes was slightly dirty.
"You win."
Maybe his last chance to survive had been trying to activate Leave back then.
Or maybe if they had listened to Shalnark and first found items capable of defending against spell attacks, then collected spell cards more quietly, they might have avoided ending up like this.
But it was too late to say any of that now.
Besides, with the way their three-man squad handled things, keeping a low profile had never been an option anyway.
Bonolenov had been consumed by anger the entire time, Feitan had never cared how big a mess they caused, and Phinks himself had been the kind of person who thought anything was fine.
The only possible result of putting the three of them together was making a huge scene, then using the fastest method they were capable of to complete Bonolenov's treatment and leave the game.
It was just that during that process, Ronin and the others had found them even faster.
They had fallen short by one move, and they couldn't defeat the other side in strength.
If they died here, there was nothing to complain about.
His blood continued to drain away, and Phinks's mind began to grow hazy.
His body fell flat onto the ground.
By the time he had lost more than half his blood, he had already stopped breathing. But the blood didn't stop flowing just because his breathing had ceased.
Only when Phinks's corpse had dried out and spread across the ground like a piece of dried squid did Shizuku stop Blinky's work.
"He actually broke the curse. Ruthless enough," Neon said. The cursed text in the air had already disappeared.
The second half of the curse had come true, but because of Phinks's brutal decisiveness, the first half had failed to complete.
But that no longer mattered.
"The Troupe members all have a kind of ruthlessness to them," Ronin said with some emotion. "Maybe it's something unique to the culture of Meteor City. People who crawl out of a hell like that all have a certain toughness."
"Am I the same?" Shizuku asked, holding Blinky as she hesitated over whether to vacuum up Phinks's corpse.
But Neon had already moved closer to the body, squatting down with bright eyes as she examined it.
The dried-out corpse's face held no hatred or resentment. Instead, there was only a faint sense of relief and unwillingness—two completely different emotions existing together in contradiction.
It truly was, just as Neon's cursed poem had said, a rare work of art.
"Mm. You're tough too," Ronin said to Shizuku. "Put Phinks's corpse away for now. Once we get back, we'll find a suitable time for Neon to turn it into a specimen."
That was what he said, but Ronin himself also had some interest in collecting part of the corpse.
He didn't need much.
Just enough material to use as a medium for Edo Tensei.
So far, through conscious collection, he had already obtained body tissue from Uvogin, Phinks, and Feitan.
As long as he found suitable living sacrifices, he could bring all three of them back into this world through Edo Tensei.
If he gave them the ability to think for themselves, the ones brought back would probably be very pleasantly surprised.
Especially if he placed them on the opposite side of Chrollo and made them attack him.
Chrollo would probably love that.
After all, they were all former spider legs.
Shizuku nodded, and Neon nodded with delight as well.
Only then did Abaki walk over from the distance. At that moment, she was carrying a large pack on her back, filled entirely with fishing gear.
Phinks's final judgment had been correct. Abaki's fishing rod had never been conjured, so as long as she wanted to, she could switch rods at any time and activate her ability.
This kind of sudden change was especially useful when she herself remained hidden.
Because enemies had a hard time judging that fact immediately and making the correct defense.
Especially since she had deliberately misled him earlier by reconnecting the broken line and replenishing the hook, which further increased the success rate of her ambush.
In this fight, the fact that the group had managed to kill Phinks through teamwork meant Shizuku deserved the greatest credit, while Abaki deserved the second-most credit.
As for Neon and Kurapika, they could only be counted as adding the finishing touches.
But what Ronin cared about more was this:
if Kurapika hadn't contributed much here, had he gone to deal with Bonolenov instead?