"You actually dared to come back?"
Jogo stared at Xiang Nan, eyes cold.
Xiang Nan stepped forward alone. Behind him, Ging Freecss, Kite, and Illumi—and Cheadle and Mizaistom—did not follow.
Originally, Cheadle and Mizaistom had been about to act.
Ging stopped them.
"Watch closely," was all he said.
He wanted everyone to see how Xiang Nan would deal with the three cursed spirits. After all, if anyone understood the enemy best, it was Xiang Nan.
"So—you've decided how you want to die?" Jogo sneered. "You bring back a few nobodies and suddenly you've got a backbone?"
He could sense how terrifying Ging was—that gut-deep kind of threat.
Even so, Jogo felt he'd already figured out the Hunters' playbook. He had warned Hanami to be ready to unfold its Domain.
"I was actually planning to let you walk away," Jogo bared his teeth in a grin.
"Don't say another word… Keep talking and all the little secrets between you and me will be out in the open. I can't allow that," Xiang Nan raised a finger to his lips and smiled.
"Huh?"
Jogo blinked.
Xiang Nan's meaning was simple. Even if Mizaistom and the others suspected he'd struck a deal with the curses, without proof it would always be slander. The moment Pariston died, Xiang Nan had rushed over with Ging and Kite to silence the witnesses.
He didn't much care whether he stayed in the Hunter Association anymore—but he still didn't want to add "inconveniences" to his future.
Cheadle and the others didn't really understand curse abilities and methods. Ging didn't either. Xiang Nan could spin whatever story he wanted—say he'd been captured, say a curse technique had bound him, say the intel hadn't been volunteered but ripped from his head by a ritual.
Whatever he made up, the Association couldn't verify.
But if Jogo blurted the truth himself, that would be different.
"Before I kill you… mind if I ask something?"
Xiang Nan looked over at the yellow-skinned cursed spirit. "Is this your ninth run, or your tenth?"
"You dragged canon characters into this place. Judging by your objectives and how they map to both worlds, the difficulty is way too high… The 'God' clearly knew what I did in Yorknew City, so it moved you here and tailored the mission accordingly. No wonder this Multiverse battleground is lasting so long this time."
"From where I'm standing, your squad's mission is basically impossible to 'complete.' From the start you were thinking about it wrong—chasing the wrong execution path. With a task this hard… it doesn't fit a placement round. So if I had to guess, this is your tenth run, right? Even at ninth, it shouldn't be this nasty… especially since your party members aren't players, but two special-grade cursed spirits."
Xiang Nan watched the yellow-skinned curse—the player behind it.
By "God," he meant the system.
At that, the yellow-skinned curse's eyes went blank for an instant, then a chill rose in its chest as it understood.
"You… don't tell me—"
Words stuck in its throat. Its pupils widened.
For this man to judge things so precisely, he'd have to have gone through a ninth or tenth run himself, to know the weight of the missions. If so, he was likely the representative player of the Hunter x Hunter world—meaning the Extinction Game had already cleared.
And then there was what Xiang Nan said before about a First-Kill Squad…
A world's representative player would never surrender.
"Right… just like you, I've got the First-Kill Armband," Xiang Nan said with an easy smile.
In the placement round, the players who earn a First-Kill Armband are monsters—no ordinary strength. You only get one shot at it: your very first battleground. Miss it and there won't be another chance.
That first battleground is the easiest it'll ever be. As long as your strength is above the matching baseline, you've got the coins to refresh into a hidden mission, and you catch a bit of luck—you can do it.
Of course, the prerequisite is simple: you have to be strong enough.
Used.
The yellow-skinned curse finally realized.
"Jogo, Hanami—!"
In a flash it shouted to them. Hanami had already been suspicious of Xiang Nan—something about him felt off. Now, after just a few lines of dialogue, their captain's expression had flipped, and Hanami knew this was bad. It didn't know the secrets of the Multiverse or the hidden rules between players and messengers, but its cautious nature kicked in at once.
A flower-branch stabbed into the ground by Xiang Nan's feet. Wind rose; petals whirled. A sea of blossoms, riotous with color, began to spread as crushing cursed energy flooded the space.
Hanami was about to unfold its Domain.
But—the Domain never formed.
Xiang Nan's figure flickered to Hanami's back. He dropped as lightly as a feather, one hand in his pocket—
and with the other hand, casually took Hanami's head off.
Blood fountained from the neck of Hanami's headless body. Buds burst across its skin. Its limbs were still frozen in the pose of casting a technique.
Jogo's pupils slowly dilated.
He had "seen" the line of Xiang Nan's movement—but it was too fast. He'd spent a lot of power fighting Pariston and failed to intercept in time.
He'd also figured there was no need—Hanami was about to deploy its Domain.
But as the blood hit the ground, everything started sliding out of control.
Jogo snapped his head toward the yellow-skinned curse.
The messenger from Jujutsu Kaisen—just like him—stood slack-eyed, drool stringing from its mouth, completely still.
No will left at all.
"What… is this?" Jogo's mind went white.
"Feels weird, doesn't it?" a chuckle sounded at his ear.
Xiang Nan draped an arm over Jogo's shoulder like an old friend and stood alongside him.
"Just like you slaughtered these Hunters—including Pariston—because they didn't understand your abilities, you barely understand Hunters' abilities. That's what it boils down to—you're too weak…" Xiang Nan said lightly at his ear, Hanami's dripping head dangling from his hand.
Then, with a casual flick of his arm—
several meters away, the yellow-skinned curse crumpled as if struck by a meteor. Its body detonated and scattered into gobbets of meat.
"They may 'know' Hunter x Hunter exists, but only in broad strokes. If they truly understood, the moment I claimed my Nen could let me 'die' once, he would've known it was a lie—bait for you. Sure, a power like that could exist, but it's more likely to be a Nen beast or a Specialist-type edge case. The odds are tiny; you don't just bump into one. At minimum, he should've questioned me and checked my Nen type. He didn't."
"That tells me the three of you run on very thin intel. And with a temperament like yours, what could you have learned from them, really?"
Rage knotted Jogo's face; veins bulged. He moved to hack Xiang Nan apart—
and in the next instant, fell into an ice-cold abyss.
His body had no sensation. He couldn't move at all.
Not even a finger.
"The scary thing about Hunters is that their ways of hunting have no fixed pattern. Nen abilities come in every shape, hard to guard against unless you've stockpiled a lot of firsthand experience and common sense."
Feeling Jogo's killing intent, Xiang Nan patted his shoulder.
Back when he "surrendered" and first made contact with the curses, he had quietly met the condition for "Hands of Love."
None of them noticed.
The "symptoms" Xiang Nan imposed were tailored.
Knock their brains out for just a few seconds—that's all he needed to finish them.
That's why Hanami never managed to trigger its Domain.
"If it were Kenjaku or Satoru Gojo, they'd get what I'm saying. But you? You don't have the head for it," Xiang Nan ruffled Jogo's hair like he was a child, still smiling.
"Sorry… your mission failed."
He dug his fingers into Jogo's skull and tore the head clean off the neck.
Blood sprayed. In the red mist, Xiang Nan's face was all easy smiles.
Judgment—complete.