"I said, isn't it about time you came out of there?"
Bisky put her small hands firmly on her hips and looked down entirely speechlessly at the highly strange, bizarre creature standing nervously right in front of her on the dirt path.
It was an upright, bipedal striped tiger. Its facial features and overall expression all looked incredibly dull and vacant, absolutely not appearing very intelligent in the slightest. But the absolute most peculiar, impossible thing about its anatomy was a massive, fleshy pocket sitting right on its thick white downy belly, looking exactly like the pouch of a giant kangaroo.
Bisky had been actively traveling alone around the dangerous world for exactly fifty years and possessed an extremely rich, encyclopedic experience with rare magical beasts. Of course she instantly recognized this highly endangered, bizarre beast called an Accompong. She just absolutely hadn't expected to suddenly, randomly encounter a wild one actively wandering in the pristine wilderness of Greed Island, complete with a fully grown Liam comfortably stuffed entirely into the deep pocket in its striped belly.
The massive belly pocket of the Accompong squirmed violently twice, stretching the fur, and a large, human palm suddenly emerged from the top slit, followed quickly by a whole, muscular arm.
The outstretched hand raised high into the air and casually, aggressively flicked the black "王" marking printed directly on the broad forehead of the Accompong.
"Who first wakes from the great, eternal dream? In my long life, I alone know."
Startled by the sudden flick, the Accompong squawked, rolled backward clumsily, and fell heavily down into the dirt. Liam was loudly, dramatically reciting ancient poetry while his whole, nearly two-meter-tall body smoothly slid entirely out of the tight belly pocket of the beast, looking completely unharmed and perfectly dry.
With a loud, magical bang, the startled Accompong instantly transformed into a glowing card on the dirt.
No. 22, Accompong, A-15.Description: A highly endangered, bizarre magical beast possessing the overwhelming instinct to aggressively stuff any objects it finds directly into the massive pouch located on its belly. In many recorded cases, if captured and searched, it will have naturally stuffed a wide variety of extremely valuable, lost items inside its pouch.
"You are incredibly lucky today. It is actually a designated card." Bisky walked over and casually picked the glowing card up from the dirt.
"Long time no see, Auntie!" Liam grinned brightly, walked over, and unexpectedly picked Bisky straight up off the ground by her armpits.
Bisky didn't bother to struggle against his grip. When he had finally had enough fun treating her like a toddler, she calmly placed her feet back on the solid ground, hooked her small finger at him in a silent challenge, and instantly punched him violently flying through the air.
"Absolutely no sense of proper respect," she grumbled, gently blowing on her pristine white-gloved fist. "And why do you say we haven't seen each other in a long time? It's been five minutes." After saying that, she tilted her head, becoming a little genuinely curious about the mechanics. "Wait, while you were hiding inside that tiger's pocket, is it actually not possible to clearly sense the passage of time? Would there be some kind of temporal disorder inside the space?"
"It certainly seems so!" Liam climbed up from the dirt entirely nonchalantly and casually patted off the dust from his coat. "A physical tiger actually possessing such a magical, dimensional pocket. Doesn't this highly specific biology mean it naturally has a Nen ability of its own? It's clearly a Conjuration-type pouch! Wait, no, if it's a physical pocket it's naturally born with, and it clearly involves bending internal space, so it should actually be... an Emission type?"
A thick drop of sweat appeared clearly on the forehead of Bisky. Is this guy actually addicted to aggressively making poor wild animals constantly test their complex Nen abilities?
She sighed, turned back down the trail, and pointed a finger directly at Shizuku. "There seems to be something incredibly wrong happening over there."
At this exact moment, Shizuku was sitting perfectly cross-legged on the cold ground, with a beautiful, crescent-white tiger-skin skirt securely wrapped tightly around her slim waist. She smoothly spread her right hand open, and a massive, glowing ball of thick aura appeared hovering in her palm, rapidly forming a highly vague, faceless human shape that was constantly twisting and morphing in the air.
Liam smiled, walking over. "You honestly don't remember what that guy looks like, right? Don't worry, I know his face exactly!"
"I absolutely knew you would eventually make the poor little girl do all the hard work for you," Bisky sighed, rolling her eyes heavily at him. "Just go do it yourself."
Liam then confidently walked over to take over the process. Shizuku stood up, smoothly took off the magical tiger-skin skirt that Lumos had seamlessly transformed into from around her waist, and tightly wrapped the fabric securely around the waist of Liam.
"Seventy-two Transformations," the highly complex cooperative Nen ability of Lumos.
The exact second after Liam securely put on the tiger-skin skirt, he immediately, physically felt the thick fabric of the skirt and his own massive aura pool absolutely seem to seamlessly integrate into one single entity. He spread his right hand open exactly as Shizuku had done, and a massive, glowing ball of thick aura emerged from his palm.
The magical tiger-skin skirt aggressively continued to violently swallow the pure aura of Liam like a black hole. At the exact same time, the vague human figure rapidly outlined by the aura emerging from the right hand of Liam gradually took a solid shape. The highly specific, squinting face finally became incredibly vivid and detailed, entirely matching his memory, until exactly one of the seventy-two cyan stripes glowing on the moon-white tiger-skin skirt flared brightly, and this complex transformation preset was officially completed and permanently saved to the skirt's memory.
Looking up from his work and gazing far ahead across the landscape, a massive stone city wasn't very far away. The dense, medieval houses in the city gathered tightly around the base of a steep hill, and a massive, imposing castle building stood highly prominently right on the very top of the hill, overlooking the town. That was the final destination of their long trip.
The three of them casually entered the bustling main city together. Liam actively looked around the streets and quickly found that the front commercial district really wasn't much different from any of the other generic starting towns scattered across Greed Island.
They were absolutely all standard buildings constructed of a highly similar, medieval architectural style, and there were highly realistic NPCs literally everywhere. They were actively playing various mundane roles in the main city—bakers, blacksmiths, guards—specifically providing the actual players who entered here with a profound, unbroken sense of deep immersion in the game world. Of course, there were plenty of actual human players actively wandering here too. Liam and the others could easily think of simply asking the local NPCs exactly where the city lord was located, and the other veteran players wandering the streets could naturally think of doing exactly that too.
Liam and the others casually crossed the busy main street and headed directly toward the steep hill sitting in the dead center of the city, going straight up the winding road for the grand castle.
"Look, just another group of self-righteous, arrogant smart guys who desperately want to take the easy shortcuts, haha."
"There will absolutely be no results from going up there. Just turn back now and save your breath!"
There were one or two highly mocking laughs echoing from the wandering crowd, obviously coming directly from other bitter players who had likely already failed the exact same attempt.
Liam walked up the steep path entirely unmoved by the taunts, when suddenly exactly three heavily armed people came aggressively around the corner from the narrow side streets on both sides and violently blocked their way forward.
"BOOK."
One of the men blocking the path muttered the command, and his heavy game card album was instantly released from his game ring with a puff of smoke. "You three are really incredibly lucky today. When you first came walking in here, we saw you actually met a rare Accompong. That is a highly valuable A-rank card."
Shizuku and Bisky calmly glanced over their shoulders behind them and clearly saw three more armed people silently following them up the hill, completely blocking their way back down to the city. It was a coordinated ambush.
"So, why don't you just obediently take out your card album right now?" the confident leader of the three people blocking the way forward said, drawing a blade. "Are you just a clueless newbie? You can actually miraculously pick up an A-rank card when you are just a fresh newbie. Honestly, I really don't know if you are incredibly lucky or just incredibly unlucky to run into us. But it absolutely seems like you guys really don't need to formally trade for it. We will just violently grab it from your corpse."
While the greedy ambushers were loudly, aggressively conspiring and monologuing about their brilliant plan, Liam, Shizuku, and Bisky were also silently, efficiently making their own tactical assignments through eye contact. Bisky and the massive tiger stayed exactly where they were, looking bored, while Liam and Shizuku violently jumped out one after another, moving exactly like lightning.
Before the arrogant leader among the three who blocked the road in front could even begin to pull a card out of his open album and say the command, Use 'Pickpocket'..., Liam had already brutally, flawlessly slapped the three of them directly on their fragile jaws exactly three times in rapid succession, and violently knocked all of them completely unconscious and flying away with three heavy palms.
At the exact same time he struck, three distinct, thick strands of pure death energy violently struck directly into the heart of Liam.
Liam was completely, absolutely very sure he had just carefully, harmlessly put a healing Star Mark directly on the jaws of the three people who blocked the road exactly as he hit them. There was absolutely no biological way they would violently die from that specific impact.
Looking back over his shoulder down the path, sure enough, the three armed people aggressively blocking the way in front of Shizuku had suddenly, violently turned into a messy group of six bloody pieces.
The three massive, violently roaring aura chainsaws currently held in the hands of Shizuku swayed slightly in the air and then quickly contracted, seamlessly merging right back into her own calm aura. She looked back up the path at Liam, her big, beautiful purple eyes entirely full of genuine doubt. "What's wrong?"
Bisky absolutely didn't say a single word, just crossing her arms and shaking her head.
Liam awkwardly scratched his cheek, looking directly at the exactly 3 extra points of pure death energy currently sitting in his glowing death energy panel, and said with a highly straight, serious face, "What a terrible, shameful waste of potential resources. What if their stolen card albums actually had the incredibly rare Blue Planet card that our dear Aunt Bisky desperately wants?"
"Ah, I am truly very sorry about that," Shizuku immediately woke up to her tactical error and bowed highly politely, slightly toward Bisky.
"Its okay," Bisky waved her small hand dismissively, then instantly turned and violently knocked Liam completely away with a brutal punch to the gut. She turned and asked Shizuku in genuine, profound confusion, "Tell me the truth, has he honestly always been this incredibly, stupidly resistant to violently getting hit?"
Shizuku adjusted her glasses and said thoughtfully, "Maybe Liam just deeply feels lonely all the time entirely because he has no real parents or elders to actively discipline him."
Bisky smiled warmly at the logic. "And what exactly about you?"
Shizuku thought about the personal question highly seriously for a moment. "Honestly, I absolutely don't know either."
"Although those dead people were completely greedy idiots, exactly one thing they just said is actually entirely right."
When Liam and the others were finally just about to walk up to the massive wooden gates of the castle, a strange man suddenly appeared completely from nowhere directly at the foot of the hill. He was looking up at the high castle walls and saying loudly to them, "It is entirely, completely useless even if you manage to go inside this grand castle. If you go in there completely empty-handed, you will absolutely only come back out completely empty-handed. The strict, hard-coded conditions for officially clearing this game are very clear and absolute. You must collect exactly 100 specific designated cards and then you can officially clear it. Otherwise, absolutely everything else you try to do is completely pointless."
Liam and Shizuku stopped and stared down at this bizarre guy who had suddenly appeared on the path. This strange man was currently wearing a massive, flowing grey wizard's cloak exactly like Gandalf the Grey, and he had a highly obvious, completely fake white beard clumsily attached directly to his face with cheap string. It wasn't really that Liam had incredibly sharp, enhanced eyesight to see the disguise, but rather that the fake beard was just far too obviously fake and completely, utterly unprofessional for a supposed wizard.
Entirely ignoring this bizarre, unhelpful person shouting at them, Liam and the other two casually jumped straight up the high stone walls one after another and headed directly toward the inner courtyard of the castle along the steep mountain road.
On the way up the wall, Bisky muttered, "That was Gylian. He is actually hiding here acting as a guide."
"What? Who is that?" Shizuku asked, highly curious as she jumped lightly onto the battlements.
Bisky landed softly next to her and said, "The strange, bearded man shouting at us just now was actually an official, highly respected Game Hunter operating in the Hunter Association. He is a legitimate Two-Star Hunter. I absolutely haven't heard a single word from him in a very long time, and it turns out he actually completely ran away and hid here." She smiled a highly knowing, predatory smile. "It absolutely seems that running this massive game actively troubles and stresses even him..."
Just when Liam and the others had first casually entered the gates of the main city, perched entirely silently on a high, thick branch of a massive tree exactly 10 kilometers away in the dense wilderness behind them, looking perfectly through a small circle formed tightly by an index finger and thumb, was a sharp, golden eye entirely full of intense, burning interest...
"Oh, how incredibly, deliciously perceptive of them~" Hisoka smiled highly happily, his voice a low purr. "It absolutely seems I simply have to be vastly more patient and wait exactly until they finally decide to act completely alone..."
I was almost completely discovered...
Or... has he actually already been discovered by them?
The twisted, excited smile on the painted face of Hisoka became more and vastly more perverted as he thought about the lethal possibilities. He absolutely seemed to deeply, genuinely enjoy complex combat situations that absolutely weren't entirely favorable to him. The sheer, overwhelming pleasure of actively walking right on the razor edge of absolute mortal danger almost completely made him unable to actively help but climax right there on the branch.
As for exactly why the infamous clown had suddenly appeared here on this highly exclusive island, the answer was actually quite incredibly simple.
Chilu, the pathetic, weak boy who Hisoka had originally, completely thought he had casually killed in the hallway, had suddenly appeared entirely alive and breathing again. It was incredibly difficult not to thoroughly arouse the deep, murderous interest of Hisoka when a corpse suddenly started walking... Of course, he absolutely didn't bother to remember the specific face of a random, weak passerby he had casually killed out of boredom, but the sheer, overwhelming, paralyzing fear emanating from Chilu when they randomly met again on the street was simply far too highly obvious, and it suddenly, violently awakened the dormant memory of Hisoka.
Wait, isn't this exact pathetic kid the one who was standing right next to him when he officially met his two highly fascinating nemeses at the hospital that day? I absolutely should have cleanly killed him entirely conveniently right after that brief meeting. Why didn't he die from my attack?
Once Hisoka became deeply, genuinely interested in a mystery, Chilu was officially the absolute unluckiest boy in the entire world.
After forcefully applying some highly superb, incredibly painful poker tricks during a brief interrogation, the smiling clown finally knew for an absolute fact that Chilu was indeed miraculously saved from death by the two highly fascinating nemeses he was looking for. And he easily learned the exact, current whereabouts of the two nemeses directly from the completely broken, frightened young man... They were currently heavily involved at a highly exclusive place called Greed Island.
Hisoka had absolutely never once heard of this Greed Island before, and he naturally had absolutely zero genuine interest in reading boring newspapers, playing childish video games, or absolutely anything like that. However, after conducting a highly brief, entirely violent investigation of the local black market, Hisoka quickly learned absolutely everything he could possibly need to know about the mechanics of the game.
Greed Island...
The Hunter Exam...
Hisoka stood perfectly balanced on the high tree branch, casually, smoothly playing with a thick bunch of sharp playing cards in his pale hand, looking intently out at the distant, hazy view of the main city where Liam and the others had just confidently entered.
Three people, walking strictly in order from the absolute shortest to the absolute tallest, walked casually in at the massive, open main gate of the grand castle, and the tallest one among them loudly raised his voice and shouted highly aggressively inside the dark hall.
"Is anyone actually hiding here... anyone here... anyone here..."
The loud, echoing sound bounced endlessly through the massive, entirely empty stone halls of the grand castle.
"There is absolutely no one hiding here," Shizuku stated flatly, adjusting her glasses as she carefully looked around the dark, dusty room.
Bisky crossed her arms and said, "It is incredibly, highly quiet in here."
Liam frowned, his hand resting near his pocket. "It is honestly a little far too quiet for comfort."
The three of them systematically walked around the massive main hall, actively going to carefully inspect the grand showroom, the opulent living room, the massive study room full of books, the lavish entertainment room... But after meticulously walking absolutely everywhere inside the massive structure, they absolutely didn't see a single, breathing person.
"The hundreds of books sitting in the grand study are entirely neat and perfectly tidy. It doesn't look like anyone has actually touched or read them in years," Shizuku observed calmly.
"The clean sheets and the soft pillows sitting in the master bedroom were completely untouched and clean, exactly as if absolutely no one had ever actually lived or slept there," Bisky added, shaking her head. "Moreover, there were no fresh ingredients or rotting food stored anywhere in the massive kitchen, and the expensive tableware absolutely didn't seem to have ever been used to eat a single meal."
"So, is this entire massive castle just a highly elaborate, empty facade? Has absolutely no one ever actually lived here?"
As Liam spoke his theory, he casually traced his fingers directly across the surface of the expensive glass coffee table sitting in the center of the living room. There absolutely wasn't even a single, microscopic speck of dust visible on his fingertip.
It was entirely, perfectly so clean and perfectly tidy.
It didn't look like anyone had ever actually lived there, because it was completely frozen in perfection by Nen.
The three of them quietly looked at each other, realizing the trick, and quickly turned and walked directly out the heavy front door.
A few tense minutes later, deep within a highly hidden, heavily shielded pocket dimension located within the castle, Razor pushed the heavy door to the monitoring room open with highly narrowed, furious eyes and shouted loudly, "Dwun, List, did three highly dangerous people just casually come walking in here just now? Something incredibly bad is happening on the island. If I recognized her aura signature correctly through the monitors, the petite little blonde girl walking among them looks exactly like the highly legendary Two-Star Gem Hunter who absolutely loves actively playing innocent, the super-petty, incredibly violent Biscuit Krueger! It would be terrible for all of us if you idiots make her unhappy..."
"Wait, is this guy threatening us in our own control room?"
At the exact same time, sitting comfortably in the incredibly messy, heavily shielded true castle living room where empty junk food wrappers, half-eaten snacks, scattered magazines, and tangled JoyStation game consoles were violently scattered absolutely all over the dirty floor, Dwun looked up. He stared directly at the highly realistic, Conjured "Razor" who was currently shouting loudly in the entirely empty, fake castle living room located entirely "in front of him" on the surveillance monitors, and said the words with thick, cold sweat rapidly forming on his unwashed head.