"Razor! Come out right now!"
"Where is Razor?!"
"Someone is here to settle a score with you!"
A massive, roc-like bird circled high above the coastal town, casting a wide shadow over the buildings. A clear, sharp female voice rained down from the sky, the words ringing out above the heads of everyone in the streets.
Is there actually someone riding that bird?
The townsfolk and the scattered players all looked up, shielding their eyes from the sun as they tried to make out the shape soaring through the clouds.
"Are you serious right now?"
"Being that high-profile on this island... Do they just have a death wish?"
"No veteran player would ever be that reckless. That has to be a total newcomer who just teleported in."
"If they really are new..."
Down in the narrow alleys and bustling streets, dozens of eyes tracked the giant bird's lazy circles. Whispers spread quickly among the hidden players. It was a shame the rider was flying so high up, far exceeding the maximum vertical range of Greed Island's spell cards. Otherwise, someone would have instantly thrown a Peek card to see exactly what kind of rare items this arrogant rookie was hiding in their binder.
High above the town, the "arrogant newcomer" in question was currently standing on the broad, feathered back of the giant bird, looking thoroughly annoyed.
"Making me shout these incredibly cheesy, villainous lines... you are completely disrespecting your elders!" Bisky complained, folding her arms. "Why couldn't you just shout it yourself?"
Shizuku, sitting comfortably near the base of the bird's neck, gently patted the dark feathers. "When Liam is transformed into a bird, he physically cannot speak human words."
"Hmph. Playing mute on purpose," Bisky muttered. She patted the wing beneath her. "You have been holding this form for a while. You must have burned through a massive amount of aura. Take us down so you can rest."
The giant roc gave a stiff nod. It tilted its head, taking a sweeping bird's-eye view of the town's layout. Spotting a quiet, empty alley near the edge of the settlement, it folded its massive wings and dropped like a stone. The wind howled violently past them as they plummeted. Fortunately, both passengers were top-tier Nen users. They waited until the very last second before the bird crashed into the dirt, leaping off gracefully and landing on their feet without a sound.
The roc hit the ground heavily, its form instantly blurring and warping until Liam stood in its place. He let out a breath and casually unfastened the tiger-skin skirt from his waist.
In just that short flight, his total capacity of thirty-two thousand aura had been drained by a staggering ten thousand points. The Seventy-two Transformations was an incredibly versatile ability, but it burned through energy like an open furnace.
"I really need to find a chance to charge up my aura battery," Liam muttered to himself, rolling his shoulders to shake off the stiffness.
"What battery?" Bisky asked, raising an eyebrow.
Liam quickly explained the mechanics of the Yin Nen Sword.
Bisky looked genuinely surprised. "You have a lot of high-level tools at your disposal, kid. Just how many different Nen abilities have you developed? Can your brain even handle juggling all of them?" She stood on her tiptoes and pressed the back of her hand against Liam's forehead, acting as if she were checking him for a fever.
Developing Nen abilities was an intensely brain-taxing process. Take Kurapika's chains, for example. To successfully conjure those chains from nothing, he had forced himself to buy real, physical chains. He touched them day and night, slept with them, listened to the sound they made, and even tasted the metal, all just to perfectly imprint every single atomic detail into his subconscious. It was the mental equivalent of rendering a highly complex 3D model from scratch. That kind of modeling ate up a massive amount of brain memory.
Even if other Nen categories didn't require physical props, the core concept was the same. Every new ability required creating a complex mental framework from nothing. If a Nen user got greedy and tried to juggle too many complex abilities without knowing their limits, they would clutter their mind with too many active models. When it came time to actually fight, if the brain ran out of processing power, it was a disaster. Just like a computer trying to run too many heavy programs at once, the user's mind would simply crash.
Liam smiled gently, stepping back from her hand. "The Sword is not my own personal ability. It was given to me."
Bisky looked intrigued. "You can just give someone a Nen ability as a gift?"
Liam gave her a brief rundown, explaining how a certain exorcist had refined a parasitic Nen beast, shaped it into the sword, and handed it over to him.
Hearing the explanation, Bisky immediately told him to summon the blade. Liam extended his hand, and the humming aura sword materialized. Bisky leaned in close, inspecting the hollow runes etched along the glowing blade. A quick count revealed there were over thirty distinct runes.
"Try to cut me with it," Bisky ordered, crossing her arms.
Liam didn't hesitate. He swung the blade directly at her shoulder. The Nen sword passed cleanly through Bisky's physical body, leaving no cut, no blood, and zero physical damage. However, the moment the blade phased through her, it forcibly siphoned a chunk of her aura, transferring it into the sword's runes.
Bisky calculated the drain instantly. "Not bad. You can just hack away at me later to fully charge your battery."
Shizuku blinked, looking back and forth between them. "Fully charge it? Just from you?"
Bisky gave a confident smirk. "Trust me, I have more than enough."
Liam tilted his head, genuinely curious. "Bisky, exactly how much raw aura do you actually have?"
Bisky just hummed, waving a hand dismissively. "What do you think? Let's get moving first. I can feel a lot of rats creeping toward us."
Liam wrapped the tiger-skin skirt back around his waist, keeping it deactivated in its low-power mode for easy transport. He mentally pulled up the map of the town he had memorized from the sky. "There is a place over there. Let's grab some food first."
As they walked down the dusty street, Shizuku looked up at Liam. "What Bisky said earlier makes a lot of sense. Developing too many distinct Nen abilities is not necessarily a good thing."
She knew Liam's ultimate goal was to develop at least one high-level ability for every single one of the six major Nen types. In his mind, since his potential across the board had been artificially maxed out, not utilizing it would be a massive waste of resources.
"It is true," Liam admitted, keeping his voice low as they walked. "Especially when it comes to Conjuration. I have the capacity for it now, but when you really think about the sheer mental complexity required to build something entirely out of thin air... picking it up as an elective ability is probably going to fry my brain."
Having just helped Lumos painstakingly develop the Seventy-two Transformations, Liam had gained a profound respect for just how much agonizing detail went into Conjuration abilities.
But that very struggle had sparked a new idea. "If it is that brain-taxing, wouldn't it be great if I just had a second brain to handle the processing?"
"Huh?" Shizuku muttered, looking completely lost.
"So, are you just planning to wander from town to town until you stumble across this Razor guy?" Bisky asked abruptly from the front.
Liam paused, rubbing his chin. "That... is actually a very good question. Give me a second to think about it."
Bisky stopped and turned around, staring at him. "You are just now starting to think about this?!"
"...Pretty much."
A few minutes later, the three of them were seated in a quiet corner of a local hotel restaurant.
"To summarize," Liam said between bites of food. "When Shizuku and I first got stranded to Greed Island, we landed on a specific stretch of coastline. Razor was waiting for us the moment we arrived. He used a GM card to instantly boot us out and drop us on a completely different continent. That confirms he is an active administrator for the game."
He took a sip of water. "So, we don't need to waste time searching every single inland town. We just need to follow the coastline and look for geography that matches the place where we first landed. Find a coastal town near that specific terrain, and we find Razor."
"You do realize this island is massive, right?" Bisky pointed out, casually taking a bite of a sweet pastry.
Shizuku looked up from her plate. "Would it be faster if we just found a complete map of the island?"
"I don't even know if an item like that exists in the game," Liam said.
None of the three physically turned their heads, but their aura senses were fully extended. They were acutely aware of the players who had been steadily filing into the hotel behind them, taking seats at nearby tables or hiding in the hallway shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Liam's baseline aura was currently calm and perfectly steady. But thanks to the hidden, hostile gazes pressing in on him from all directions, microscopic ripples were shivering across the very outer layer of his aura, reacting like dust particles caught in a breeze. This was the subtle sensory trick Bisky had taught him, and it was incredibly effective at making up for his lack of real-world combat experience.
Twenty minutes later, six players were piled in an unconscious heap by the hotel entrance, their eyes rolled back in their heads. Their card binders had been completely emptied.
"So none of you idiots have a full map either?" Liam sighed in disappointment. He casually tossed the sixth player—who had tried to sneak-attack them with a spell card—onto the pile. Before turning away, he subtly pressed his thumb against the man's chin, leaving a glowing rose-gold pentagram mark on his skin, just exactly like he had done to the other five.
If he remembered the manga correctly, Razor's questline required a specific number of players to even trigger the initial event. Liam scratched his head, trying to recall the exact number.
Behind him, Bisky and Shizuku bumped fists, looking over their stolen loot.
"Did any of them have a Blue Planet?" Liam asked.
"Not a chance," Bisky said, flipping through the binder with a disappointed sigh. "Just a bunch of low-tier spell cards."
"And a lot of useless garbage, like rocks," Shizuku added, holding up a common item card.
Liam glanced around the lobby. The few remaining players who had been watching from the shadows quickly averted their eyes and scrambled out the back door in sheer panic.
High above the hotel, a small gray bird circled in the sky. Liam stepped outside and pointed a finger toward the distant horizon. Jaku immediately tucked its wings and shot away like an arrow.
Bisky stepped out beside him, shielding her eyes. "You are not seriously making that poor bird fly the entire coastline of the island, are you?"
"Sometimes the exhaustive method is the only way," Liam said, turning and walking toward the town's exit. "He will fly the perimeter and leave markers along the way."
Bisky and Shizuku followed close behind.
The moment the three of them were out of sight, the six unconscious players piled by the hotel door suddenly snapped their eyes open. The sudden movement startled a passing NPC waiter, who dropped his tray in shock. The six players didn't say a single word to each other. They scrambled to their feet, their expressions blank, and immediately sprinted away in six completely different directions without looking back.
While Jaku began the grueling process of mapping out the coastal towns—Liam had finally remembered that Razor's base was near a large lighthouse, which helped narrow the search considerably—Liam, Bisky, and Shizuku hiked out into the wilderness. They found a quiet, elevated clearing surrounded by dense forest, the perfect terrain to resume their training.
Liam extended his left hand. A chaotic, turbulent sphere of aura, roughly the size of a basketball, manifested over his palm. He tossed it gently toward Shizuku. She didn't flinch, plunging her hands directly into the violent energy storm as she concentrated, trying to force Blinky into existence against the heavy pressure.
Because Liam's potential in Emission was currently maxed out, he had zero trouble maintaining the chaotic aura sphere from a distance to assist Shizuku. While he held it steady, his mind was entirely focused on his own upcoming Emission ability.
Just as he had mentioned to Shizuku earlier, his core concept for the ability was essentially creating a second brain to handle complex mental processing. And the best way to manifest an Emission ability like that was, undoubtedly, a Nen beast.
He already had the foundational framework mapped out in his head. Thanks to his unique system, what would normally take months of drafting, meditation, and agonizing mental modeling was already complete. He was itching to bring the concept into reality.
Liam extended his right hand. A dense ball of pure aura flared to life over his palm, expanding rapidly before dropping to the grass. Slowly, the glowing mass began to shift and stretch, forming the distinct silhouette of a human figure right in front of him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~