"Bang bang bang!!!"
"Ahhh!!!"
In an instant, the auction hall turned into a living hell.
"Get behind me, now!" Shachmono Tocino immediately activated his Nen ability, Eleven Black Children.
But it was completely useless. The gap between the two sides was simply too great.
The Nen bullets fired from Franklin's Double Machine Gun tore straight through everything in their path, effortlessly smashing Tocino's puppets apart like popping bubbles.
Once the defensive dolls created by his Nen were destroyed, the barrage of Nen bullets poured down on Tocino like a violent storm.
"You two... run..." With the last of his strength, Tocino spoke the final words of his life.
Protected by Tocino, Baise and Ivlenkov became the only two survivors left in the room.
"Tocino!"
Their hearts were filled with terror and grief, but under Tocino's cover, the two of them forcibly suppressed their emotions, calmed themselves, and sprinted for the main doors.
However, the instant they stepped through them, a bizarre, shrieking vacuum cleaner came crashing down from above!
...
After the major Mafia families received the news and rushed to the auction hall, they discovered that not a single person was left behind.
Including the tables and chairs, even all of the auction items present at the venue had vanished without a trace.
Kurapika and Melody also arrived at the scene. After searching the area, they found only Baise's three bloodstained earrings.
"It looks like Baise and the others have already met with disaster," Melody said softly. Then she heard Kurapika's heartbeat growing faster and faster.
"To be able to do all this, the enemy must be a powerful group of organized Nen users acting according to plan. And to act this recklessly, unafraid of making enemies of the entire Mafia world... there can only be one answer. The spiders! They've finally begun to move!" Beneath his colored contacts, Kurapika's eyes had already turned scarlet.
...
"The treasures are all gone?" Chrollo received an unexpected phone call from far away in the abandoned building.
"Yes. There was nothing in the vault of the underground auction. The only informed host said that the treasures specially delivered to the vault before the auction began had already been moved away a few hours earlier," Feitan said coldly over the phone.
At this moment, he showed a side completely different from his usual bloodthirsty violence.
On a large airship, Uvogin, Nobunaga, Shalnark, Shizuku Murasaki, Feitan, Franklin, and Machi were all gathered together.
"It's like someone already knew something would happen today," Uvogin said, putting his mobile phone on speaker so everyone aboard could hear.
"Oh?" Chrollo remained as calm as ever.
"Could there be a traitor in our Phantom Troupe?" A sharp light flashed in Feitan's eyes.
"There can't be a traitor," Chrollo said calmly with a faint smile. "The Bible says Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. If there really were a traitor among us, then for what price would they betray us?"
"What benefit would there be in selling us out to the Mafia? Money? Fame? Status? If anyone among us could truly be satisfied by things like that, would they ever have joined the Phantom Troupe in the first place?"
Chrollo swept his gaze across the Troupe members, though he still cast Ilo a very subtle glance.
There might not be anyone who would betray them for profit, but what if there was some twisted lunatic who would sell them out just for the sake of watching the chaos unfold?
After all, even before Ilo, there had already been one deranged madman who killed an original member of the Troupe purely for the chance to fight him, then became their companion in that member's place.
Though Chrollo's glance was extremely subtle, Ilo still noticed it.
So he stretched lazily, catlike in his ease, and said in a languid tone, "Yesterday, while I was cleaning up the Mafia in Yorknew City, I ran into a strange guy."
The moment Ilo spoke, everyone present—including the Troupe members on the other end of the phone—focused their attention on him.
"Fortune-telling?" Chrollo immediately caught the key point.
"Yeah. I was interested in that word at the time, so I grabbed what seemed to be the family's number two guy. After a warm and friendly exchange, the young man very happily told me everything." Ilo smiled, but there was no warmth in his eyes at all.
"The Nostrade Mafia family has a young lady who's extremely skilled at fortune-telling. Supposedly, every prophetic poem she has written since she started telling fortunes has come true. And it's said that the Nostrade Family relied on that young lady's prophecy ability to build up a huge network throughout the Mafia world and rise rapidly through the ranks."
"I see..." Chrollo lowered his head and thought it over carefully. If it was a fortune-teller, then that matched several of his own deductions perfectly. He then said into the phone, "Shalnark."
"Understood, Boss. I'll definitely investigate that Nostrade Family heir in full," Shalnark replied at once.
"So what are we supposed to do next?" Uvogin asked, scratching at his chest hair.
"Did you ask that host about the auction items?"
"Yeah. But even right up until he died, that host kept saying he had no idea what happened. Feitan handled the interrogation himself, so it seems he really was telling the truth."
"Come to think of it, he was probably the one most deserving of pity today~" Feitan added.
"But we did find out who made a move. Supposedly it was the Shadow Beasts—the same Shadow Beasts the new Number 12 mentioned before. Hey! Number 12! You should know something about the Shadow Beasts, right?!" Uvogin shouted into the phone.
"Why are you yelling so loud? I can hear you just fine!" Ilo snapped back without hesitation. "The Shadow Beasts are the private squad of the Ten Dons, the strongest force within the Mafia families. Supposedly, the Ten Dons selected the toughest combatants from Mafia organizations all over the world to form that unit. But from what I've seen, their strength is only so-so."
"Oh?" Uvogin raised an eyebrow on the other end. "From the way you say that, it sounds like you've dealt with them before."
"More or less~ Yesterday, while I was taking out the trash, one guy who called himself a member of the Shadow Beasts showed up. He kept babbling about how I was unforgivable and how he was going to hand me over to the Ten Dons. What he said annoyed me a little, so I hit him a bit too hard. I didn't even get to hear his name."
"As for his strength, it was only so-so. Not nearly enough for me to take seriously. Though it sounds like they use animals as codenames. The one I killed looked pretty animal-like too~"
(End of Chapter)
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