Kenji swiped his blade clean, crimson droplets splashing off it and splattering against the alley wall, before sliding the weapon back into his inventory. He looked at the corpses around him and felt… nothing.
He let out a sigh, a soft sound in the desolate silence. He had really changed. Once, the sight of mangled bodies might have unsettled him, might have brought a flicker of doubt or a pang of unease. Now? Killing a dozen men in cold blood didn't even register as a moral dilemma, it was a task, an inconvenience, a simple problem with a swift, brutal solution.
The empathy, the faint echoes of his former humanity, had been eroded by the constant cycle of leveling up and the brutal logic of his System.
He had learned to compartmentalize. The "Gamer's Mind" skill had become a core part of his psyche, a shield that filtered out the emotional noise of his actions.
It didn't make him a sociopath, but it did make him efficient. He still felt, he knew that killing was wrong, and he knew he would feel bad if he killed an innocent person, but these pests, he won't lose a wink of sleep.
He could execute a dozen men like these with the cold detachment of a man checking items off a grocery list. He didn't enjoy it, but he didn't regret it either. They had brought this upon themselves the moment they decided to make him their target.
He turned and walked away, not even bothering with the bodies. They had come for him, armed with the intent to kill or capture, and they had failed. The cleanup was not his responsibility, it was theirs. He sighed and looked at the men. This was simply the consequence of their poor choices.
The city's filth, the endless cycle of violence, was not his to clean. He started to walk back toward his hotel, the matter already forgotten, the scent of blood and death no more distracting than the smell of rain.
After all, if you come to kill someone, then you'd better be prepared to die yourself. He had other, more important things to think about right now. A smile bloomed on his face, it seemed going to the casino did help after all, because he finally had it. He finally had an idea of what he was going to create. He had finally decided on his Hatsu.
The endless brainstorming, the frustration of Nen's limits, the rules that forced users to bind themselves with restrictions and vows just to achieve real power, it had been maddening.
One couldn't just decide to make an ability that granted them omnipotence, Nen had limits, or rather, the user had limits, and therefore, they couldn't create power like that.
There were, after all, abilities that could grant wishes and even bring back the dead, so at the end it's not that nen can not do it, but it's the user's limitations.
The traditional Nen framework, with its six defined categories and strict rules, was a system for people who had no alternative.
He had been thinking of how to do things and had even thought he would have to make a binding vow, but then he just remembered that he was a Gamer. He was a cheat.
Why should he have to play by the rules? The entire premise of his existence was to subvert the established order. The traditional Nen framework was designed for a world without Systems, without cheat codes. He didn't need to follow it. He could simply... break it.
All he had to do was lay the foundation, and the System, his ultimate cheat, would take care of the remaining details. He envisioned not a single, powerful Hatsu.
Oh, what he had planned already was going to have been worth a serious binding vow, but if this worked....
It was a terrifying, brilliant idea, one that could either make him an unstoppable force.
This Hatsu wouldn't be a single, simple ability, no, while simple single abilities were powerful, that was not what he wanted, and he would get what he wanted. He was going to sit down and work out the details of the ability so that when he created it, he wouldn't have to look back and say he messed up. "Let's pray it doesn't blow up in my face," he muttered as he walked, a prayer to a force he wasn't sure existed.
In a hotel, not too far from Kenji's location.
"Something has changed."
Kurapika stood at the window of the Nostrad penthouse, gazing at the glittering sprawl of Yorknew below. He could tell. After the loss of Neon's Nen ability, Light Nostrad had all but broken down, not even in his right senses anymore, and Kurapika had taken charge of the family.
The burden of leadership seemed to have been too heavy for the man as he all but cracked, but Kurapika took the lead. He told the man to leave everything to him and all but took over the family, and slowly, people were coming to him for matters not light.
The role of lead was indeed a heavy burden, but he bore it without a single complaint, his resolve as hard and sharp as his chains. He had been trying to change the way things were, to slowly steer the family toward legitimate enterprises, but for now, they were still a mafia family, still tangled in the web of the city's underworld. This was what helped him know that something had changed, for the web itself was frayed and torn.
Whispers drifted through the families, men were being slaughtered, operations being interfered with. No one knew who was responsible. At first, everyone suspected rival houses, but after they gathered to scream accusations at one another, they figured out it was not.
Now they knew someone else was out there, reducing their numbers and making a fool out of them. They were not happy at all. The atmosphere of the city had become a thick, palpable stew of paranoia and mistrust.
Some had suggested they join hands and hunt the culprit down, but that idea was shot down fast. No one wanted to work together anymore, the fear was too great, and the greed too strong. Every family was busy trying to salvage what was left of their operations, convinced that a rival was secretly profiting from the chaos.
Kurapika was more than happy with that. He saw this as a natural culling, a brutal but necessary cleanse of the city's corrupt underbelly. After all, what he planned for the Nostrad family would eventually clean their hands of the illegal businesses and lead them into something more legitimate.
He had no problems with someone reducing the future problems he might face. He viewed this wild card with a detached curiosity, for now, working in his favor. Still, he would not sit by if they attacked his faction. So far, they hadn't, and he wasn't sure if that was intentional or just luck, but should they try it, he'd kill them on the spot. His scarlet eyes narrowed as he watched the city below.
FORTUNE VIEW HOTEL
A wine bottle sailed across the room, shattering against the wall as a scream rang out. Lady Fortuna was not happy. Not happy at all.
"HOW DARE HE! HOW DARE THAT MONGREL!" she lashed out, throwing anything she could get her hands on around the room. A delicate vase, a crystal goblet, a gilded clock, all of it shattered against the walls, her fury ripped through her lavish suite.
She had given him the honor of being in her presence, a gift she bestowed on no one lightly, and he had denied her, walked away, and then had the audacity to kill her men.
Oh, she knew he was the one who did it, no doubt about it. One of her men had come back reporting that the people she had sent to snatch him up were all dead. Dead.
She didn't care for their lives, they were just pawns, after all. But they were hers, and he had taken them away. Only she had the right to take anything from others, no one had the right to take from her. It was this mentality that had gotten her here, the belief that the world was her playground and its people were her toys. She would not stand back and let this go.
The report her men had dug up on Kenji was worthless. There was barely anything past a few months ago, it was like he had appeared out of thin air, and it pissed her off even more. This lack of a past, this void, was more unnerving than any known history. She sighed and fell back onto her couch, watching the man who had brought her the news, still kneeling. She could see him shaking, no doubt afraid for his life. She needed to cool down, and for that, she needed...
She stood up and started to strip, removing layer after layer of clothing. She turned and bent down, slowly peeling away the last of her garments, her panties, giving the man a show of her perky ass.
She could feel the man's gaze, or rather, his frantic effort to keep his eyes down. She walked over to him, slowly, her hips swaying. She stopped a little in front of the man and bent down, lifting his chin with a finger. His eyes looked at her, yet desperately tried not to look at her bare chest. She leaned in and whispered in his ear, "Follow me."
She stood and dragged him into her bedroom, grabbing him by the face as they started to kiss. He seemed to eagerly dive in and start to pleasure her, his hands roaming her body.
They continued the kiss as she dragged him down onto the bed. The kiss grew more heated as the man suddenly began to struggle, his hands trying to reach for her, but she pinned both hands with hers, deepening the kiss.
His skin started to shrivel, drying up. It was like all the moisture in his body was being sucked out, a horrifying, sickening feeling. He struggled, but it was clear he was getting weaker by the moment, his life force draining away, and in a matter of moments, all that remained was a dried-up corpse. She pushed it down the bed as it collapsed onto the floor at the foot of the bed.
She let out a moan as a faint pink light seemed to course through her body, clearly showing through her veins, before she leaned back against her pillows and sighed in contentment.
A wave of intoxicating energy pulsed through her, revitalizing her, filling her with a renewed sense of power and vitality. This was one of her Nen abilities, a gruesome, parasitic power that drained the life force of others and converted it into her own raw energy. The power to literally consume and take from others.
"Oh god, the climax always gets me. Nothing like a late-night snack before bed," she murmured, tugging the sheets over herself.
Her lips curved into a smile.
Kenji would be hers. He was a puzzle she would solve, a prize she would claim. And then, when she had solved the puzzle and learned all his secrets, she would devour him. And when she did, she would make sure to consume him, body and soul, taking not only his Nen but his very essence, and his soul would live on inside her, a testament to her superiority.
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