Outside the mountain castle, Liam stepped through the heavy wooden gates and into the crisp, cool air. He reached down to his waist, his fingers grasping the rough edge of a tiger-skin skirt that seemed to materialize from nothing. He pulled it loose. Instantly, his features rippled and shifted. His height adjusted, his face smoothed out, and the rugged visage of Ging Freecss melted away, leaving Liam standing there in his true form.
The discarded skirt dissolved into a swirling mass of aura. It hit the dirt path and reshaped itself, solidifying back into the familiar, imposing form of Lumos. The tiger shook its massive head, took a few lazy steps forward, and looked up at him with intelligent eyes.
Liam ran a quick mental calculation. Lumos's Seventy-two Transformations was a cooperative Nen ability. It didn't drain the tiger's aura, but rather fed off the person wearing the skirt. The toll it took depended heavily on the physical difference between the user's original body and their chosen disguise. Since Ging and Liam were relatively close in build, he hadn't felt the burning strain of rapid aura depletion while holding the form.
He figured he had spent around two thousand aura during his twenty-minute stroll through the empty castle. That broke down to roughly five aura per second. With his current total capacity sitting comfortably above thirty thousand, he could theoretically maintain the Ging disguise for a solid five or six hours. It was a hefty cost, especially if he needed to fight. Activating advanced techniques like Gyo or Ko while transformed would spike the drain and cut that time limit drastically.
With a casual flick of his wrist, a sharp blade of pure energy extended from his hand. It was the Yin Nen Sword. Faint, hollow runes were etched along the glowing length of the condensed aura. Only one of those runes glowed with a solid light. It was a remnant from a job he had done back in a hospital, exorcising a patient's nen curse. Liam liked to think of the stored energy in that rune as a portable aura battery. If he could siphon the aura stored in the Yin Nen Sword to offset the drain of the Seventy-two Transformations, it wouldn't impact his base combat stamina at all. A very useful trick.
"What are you thinking about?" Shizuku asked, her voice pulling him from his thoughts.
Liam dispelled the blade. The two of them, flanked by the massive tiger, left the castle grounds and made their way down the winding mountain path toward the town below. As they reached the bustling streets, Liam scanned the crowd. "I was just wondering, where is Aunt Bi?"
They found Bisky sitting on a rickety wooden stool at a roadside food stall, happily slurping down a bowl of steaming noodles. She was chatting with a scruffy-looking man. Liam narrowed his eyes as he approached. It was Gylian, the nagging guy they had bumped into at the foot of the castle hill earlier. Bisky had called him a Game Hunter. Seeing a Game Hunter wandering around the most magical, Nen-driven game in the world made perfect sense.
"Perfect timing," Bisky said as Liam walked up. She drained the last sip of broth from her bowl and set it down with a satisfied clack.
Liam looked at the empty bowl, then at the two of them. "So, did you figure it out? Do you know where the city lord is?"
Bisky wiped her mouth with a napkin. "I just finished eating. Pay the bill, kid."
"Book," Liam called out, not really minding. His game binder materialized in the air before him. He pulled out a ten thousand Jenny card and handed it over to the stall owner. Claiming his right as the one who paid, Liam grabbed a stool and nudged Bisky over to make room. Lumos stretched out lazily on the dusty ground beside them, and Shizuku calmly took a seat on the tiger's broad back.
Bisky leaned her elbows on the table. "I was just asking Gylian here a question. As a Game Hunter, it is no surprise he is poking around a special game like Greed Island. But what I do not understand is how someone of his skill level hasn't actually beaten the game yet."
"Why haven't you?" Shizuku asked, tilting her head as she looked at Gylian.
Liam chimed in, leaning forward. "What I am more curious about is how a One-Star Professional Hunter doesn't even have the pocket change to pay for his own noodles."
Gylian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, completely unbothered. "My life philosophy has always been simple. When you go out to eat, the oldest or the strongest person at the table pays the bill." He shot a pointed look at Bisky.
Liam grinned, looking over at Bisky as well. "Well, I am definitely not the oldest. Does that mean Aunt Bi thinks I am the strongest?"
Bisky let out a sharp laugh. "I have my own life philosophy. If you have an apprentice handy, you never have to do anything yourself."
Gylian blinked, his eyes shifting to Liam. "Is this your new disciple?" he asked.
Liam pointed a thumb at Shizuku, who was still sitting quietly on the tiger. "Do not just look at me. She is in the same boat."
Shizuku had not let the original topic go. "So why haven't you cleared it yet?" she asked again.
Gylian stood up, stretching his back. "It is not that I failed to clear it. I just do not want to yet. Do you really think the most interesting thing about Greed Island is beating it? The real question is how all these impossible, magical items are actually being manifested." With that, he turned and ambled away, quickly disappearing into the flow of the town's foot traffic.
Bisky watched him go, her expression turning serious. "There is no doubt that Greed Island runs entirely on Nen."
"The cards are just conjured by Nen," Shizuku said. "That part is easy to understand. What is he so stuck on?"
"This is the key," Bisky said, raising a single finger. "When a player clears the game, their reward is taking three cards out into the real world. Think about the items we are talking about here. A kettle that pours endless water. A hot spring that cures any skin disease. A stone that guarantees pregnancy. A demon that grants wishes, an archangel that heals any wound, or a television that predicts the next twenty-four hours. Inside the game, you can laugh those off as fun mechanics. But if you take them outside, they become real, functioning Nen abilities."
It was a staggering thought. If those items were brought into the real world, their effects were nothing short of miraculous. Even a seasoned veteran like Bisky felt a chill when she really stopped to consider the implications. Every single one of those god-like card effects was created by a person, or a small group of people. What kind of monstrous aura capacity and absolute mastery over Nen was required to forge something like that?
"Let me interrupt," Liam said. "When I first entered the game, the NPC at the start didn't say a single word about what the actual clear rewards were. How did that guy know?"
Bisky shrugged. "He is a Game Hunter. He has his own unique ways of digging up hidden information in this field. Do not underestimate Professional Hunters, kid."
"So, in short," Shizuku summarized, "he thinks the cards are unnatural. Once he found out they could be taken into the real world, he became obsessed with figuring out how they were made."
"Exactly," Bisky nodded. "But I am only here for the Blue Planet gem. I don't really care about the rest of the game's secrets." She paused, her eyes scanning the area around them, then looking up toward the sky. "Where is that bird of yours? It usually hangs around close by."
Liam smiled. "I asked it to run a little test for me."
"What kind of test?" Bisky asked.
"I wanted to see what happens if a player tries to leave the island without using the proper spell cards."
Miles away, on the western coast of Greed Island, the gray-feathered bird tucked something safely away. It spread its wings and took off, soaring past the sandy shoreline and heading straight out over the crashing ocean waves.
High above the water, Jaku's dark eyes flashed. Back in town, Liam closed his own eyes, his consciousness seamlessly syncing with the bird's vision.
"So you really can just fly straight out?" Liam thought, using Jaku's perspective as the bird continued to flap its wings, pushing further away from the island's border. The salty sea breeze rushed past its feathers. "Wait, no. That is not right."
Barely two minutes after crossing the boundary into the open sea, the world in front of Liam's shared vision violently warped. A loud rushing sound filled his ears. In the blink of an eye, the endless stretch of ocean vanished. It wasn't that the scenery had rapidly zoomed away. He had simply been erased from that spot and deposited somewhere else.
Jaku fluttered its wings, catching an updraft to stabilize itself. Looking down, Liam saw the familiar line of white sand and crashing surf. He had been teleported right back to the edge of the island's coast.