The dense ball of aura hovering over Liam's right hand slowly stretched and molded itself into a human shape. It was still just a projected Nen beast, not a physical clone with real flesh and blood, making it completely invisible to the eyes of ordinary people.
Bisky and Shizuku, however, saw it clearly. Shizuku blinked, her eyes adjusting as she focused her aura. She watched the hazy, shifting energy sharpen into absolute clarity.
The figure had no real facial features. Its entire face was smooth and pale green, like a polished jade mask. The only distinct marks were two bright red curves slashing diagonally toward the temples, giving the eerie impression of eyes that were perpetually half-closed in quiet amusement. Long, stark white hair was gathered casually at the back of its head, tied into a messy bun and held in place by a simple wooden hairpin shaped like a twisted branch.
At Liam's silent command, the hazy aura forming the body solidified. The figure stood about one point eight meters tall, putting it exactly at his eye level. Even the texture of its clothing became distinct. The jade-faced figure wore a flowing, light blue Taoist robe with wide, oversized sleeves that rippled gently, even though there was no wind in the clearing. The overall presence of the Nen beast was perfectly serene and entirely otherworldly, like a spirit that did not belong in the mortal realm.
Bisky tilted her head, inspecting the figure from top to bottom. "You made it a woman."
Liam shrugged casually, letting his hands fall to his sides. "Look, even when I play video games, I always create female characters. At least they are easier on the eyes when you have to stare at them all day."
Bisky smirked, tossing a sideways glance at the dark-haired girl standing nearby. "What, is Shizuku not eye-catching enough for you?"
Shizuku blinked, looking genuinely confused by the sudden shift in topic.
Liam just rolled his eyes and glared at the older Hunter. "Aunt Bi, please. Keep it professional. Do not start stirring up trouble for no reason."
He turned his attention back to the silent, blue-robed Nen beast. The design felt slightly incomplete. It was always better to finish the visual modeling all at once to cement the image in his mind.
After a moment of studying the empty spaces on the robe, Liam snapped his fingers. Two vertical lines of neat, black ink slowly bled into the fabric of the plain white collar, written in an elegant, flowing script: Rivers flow outside the world, mountains drift in and out.
Liam nodded, satisfied with the final touch. He raised his hand and swiped it through the air, exactly like someone rotating a digital model on a screen. The jade-faced Taoist nun spun smoothly on the spot, giving him a full, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of his creation.
"So, does she have a name?" Bisky asked, crossing her arms.
"Just call her Jade," Liam said without missing a beat.
"What exactly is the ability?" Bisky pressed, her curiosity piqued.
Shizuku looked down at Blinky, the bug-eyed, fish-like vacuum cleaner resting in her hands, and suddenly understood. "Oh. That is what you mean."
Bisky's eye twitched. "You two need to stop talking in riddles right now." Without warning, she threw two simultaneous, lightning-fast uppercuts aimed right at their jaws.
Thanks to their intense training and the fact that Bisky deliberately pulled her punches, both Liam and Shizuku reacted in time. They flipped backward through the air, landing lightly in the grass several meters away.
Liam grinned from a safe distance. "It is nothing too complicated. Just a little spatial trick I am calling Universe in the Sleeve. The Nen beast itself has only just taken physical shape. The specific rules and limits of the ability still need to be ironed out."
It was not just Universe in the Sleeve, either. The secondary ability that would allow the jade-faced Taoist to function as an independent second brain required incredibly careful planning. For now, the entire framework Liam had built centered around those two core functions.
"A space and time ability," Bisky guessed, her annoyance fading into professional interest the moment she heard the name. She nodded in approval. "That fits perfectly with high-level Emission. Not bad at all. And you said you needed Shizuku's help. Oh, right. Her vacuum cleaner uses a similar spatial concept."
Liam raised a single finger to emphasize his point. "Exactly. So, the absolute first rule for Universe in the Sleeve will be this: it can only store living creatures."
Shizuku stood perfectly still, her eyes widening in realization. Blinky's absolute rule was that it could only inhale non-living objects. It could not consume anything that was alive. If Liam's ability worked the way he intended, it would be the exact opposite. They would cover each other's blind spots perfectly.
Bisky smiled, clearly impressed by the strategy. "Well, do not rush the process. Take your time to get the rules right."
There really was no reason to rush. It was going to take days for Jaku to complete its sweeping patrol around the entire coastline of Greed Island. With time to kill, Liam and the others settled comfortably into a strict daily training routine in the remote forest clearing.
Shizuku split her time evenly. Half the day was spent refining her Conjuration by making Blinky feel more physically real, and the other half was dedicated to Transmutation, practicing the chaotic, buzzing aura of her chainsaw form. This was all done while maintaining a steady baseline of physical and aura-capacity training.
Liam focused almost all of his mental energy on perfecting the jade-faced Taoist. The rules of his new Nen beast required intense concentration. Every now and then, he would pause to consult Shizuku about the specific mechanics of how Blinky's vacuum space functioned. Occasionally, he would activate the Star Mark he had placed on her shoulder, temporarily sharing her senses so he could experience her spatial Conjuration firsthand from a purely subjective perspective.
As for Bisky, her schedule was entirely her own. Sometimes she would lounge on a warm rock, lazily flipping through fashion magazines she had bought in a nearby town. Other times, she would vanish into the woods for hours, off playing who knows where. Knowing her personality, she was probably wandering the roads, pretending to be a helpless, cute little girl just to ambush and rob overconfident players.
At the very least, they never had to worry about food. Blinky's infinite storage space held a year-round stockpile of fresh water and supplies. During this period of heavy training, neither Liam nor Shizuku cared much about the taste of their meals. As long as it provided enough calories to keep their aura burning, they were satisfied.
Two days passed in the blink of an eye.
Whenever Liam felt a faint mental ping from Jaku, he would activate the bird's Star Mark and project his consciousness directly into its small, feathered body. Riding along in Jaku's perspective, he would command the bird to swoop down and apply a fresh Star Mark to a target passing through whichever coastal town it was currently surveying. Once the tracking beacon was set, Liam would withdraw his consciousness back to the forest clearing and return to his Nen beast development.
Because Jaku was taking its sweet time soaring on the coastal updrafts, the rock bird dragged the patrol out for another three or four days before finally completing the mission.
It had located eight different fishing villages or small port towns scattered along the seaside, each one featuring a towering lighthouse visible in the distance. Jaku had successfully planted a Star Mark in all eight locations. Seven of those marks were stuck onto random players who did not look particularly bright or observant. The final mark was slapped onto a passing stray cat sleeping on a sunbaked dock. As long as the targets functioned as live signal sources for Liam's positioning and navigation, the host did not matter.
Content with the complete map, Liam left Jaku to play by itself near the eighth lighthouse and fully withdrew his projected consciousness.
"Alright, Razor," Liam muttered, stretching his arms over his head. "Come at me."
He did not actually hold any sort of grudge against the Game Master. But the card Razor guarded was exceptionally rare. Securing that specific prize would give Liam the perfect leverage to trade with other high-level players for a Blue Planet gem. And on top of that, he would get a chance to spar with a true master like Razor. Two birds with one stone.
A moment later, the heavy rustling of leaves echoed from the tree line. Lumos burst from the thick undergrowth, the massive tiger having spent the last few days running wild and hunting in the woods.
Suddenly, an ear-splitting, mechanical screech shattered the quiet of the forest, startling the tiger so badly it flinched backward.
Lumos whipped its large head around to see Shizuku standing in the center of the clearing. She was swinging an incredible, ten-meter-long chainsaw forged entirely of violently vibrating aura. With a single, smooth horizontal sweep, the roaring blade sliced clean through a solid rock outcropping the size of a small house.
Bisky was standing right on top of the boulder. As the massive top section sheared off and slid toward the grass with a heavy, grinding thud, she hopped down lightly, landing without making a sound.
She walked over and examined the humming chainsaw still gripped in Shizuku's hands. "A high-speed cutting chain. As a pure Transmutation ability, that is actually quite impressive. Judging by the depth of the cut and the density of the stone, that strike carried about four or five times your baseline destructive power in terms of raw physical force."
Liam did the math in his head. Shizuku's current total aura capacity hovered around twenty-four thousand points. Her concentrated Ko output maxed out at about twenty-four hundred aura. According to Bisky's rapid assessment, the chainsaw Shizuku had just swung could tear straight through the absolute Ko defense of an enemy operating with ten thousand aura. That meant, at her current level, if Shizuku landed a clean, full-power strike on a stationary target, she could breach the defenses of a master with a total aura pool of a hundred thousand.
Bisky raised a finger, continuing her lecture. "However, that is only in the absolute most ideal scenario. A target that just stands there and lets you hit them. Your chainsaw obviously has a strict length limit, right?"
Shizuku nodded, the violent buzzing of the blade fading as she powered it down. "Yes. The maximum length I can push it to is about twelve meters, but only if I am generating a single blade. I can split it into twelve separate chainsaws, but they would only be an average of one meter each."
Bisky crossed her arms, analyzing the mechanics. "Then if your enemy realizes what you are doing and decides to fight exclusively from long range, your weapon's performance will be severely handicapped. And even against a close-range fighter, having sufficient lethality does not matter if your physical swing speed cannot keep up with their footwork. If you miss, you leave yourself wide open. That is incredibly dangerous."
Shizuku thought about the critique for a long moment, staring at the cleanly severed boulder, and gave a slow, understanding nod.
"And what about the young master over there?" Bisky called out, not bothering to look over her shoulder. "How is the development of your little jade-faced Nen beast coming along?"
"How old are you, and you are still making dirty jokes?"
Liam's voice came from directly behind her.
Bisky stiffened. She felt the distinct, eerie presence of the projected Nen beast gliding up right behind her back. Just as she opened her mouth to snap a response at Liam, everything in her field of vision instantly turned pitch black. It was as if she had suddenly plunged backward into an infinite, lightless void.
A few meters away, Shizuku stood completely still, watching the scene unfold. The jade-faced, Taoist-robed Nen beast had drifted silently up behind Bisky. It raised its wide, flowing left sleeve toward the older woman's back. The moment Liam called out her name and Bisky mentally registered the response, Bisky's physical body instantly dissolved into a swirling ball of pure aura. Like water spiraling down a drain, the compressed aura flew directly into the dark, fluttering fabric of the Taoist nun's left sleeve, vanishing without a trace.