There were a lot of insects in the room—especially flies.
The overwhelming impression Joey got was that there had to be rotting meat inside.
Otherwise, there was no way so many disgusting bugs would be gathering.
His En never retracted—it continuously covered the room and its occupants.
And yet, despite that, the person inside never used En for counter-detection.
That left two possibilities.
First: the person's skill wasn't high enough to sustain En for long. In other words, they were weak.
Second: they were extremely confident—confident enough to believe that any ambush could be instantly countered with ease.
Joey leaned toward the second theory.
The steady, lava-like Nen circulating in the figure's body gave it away.
Like a dormant volcano needing only a nudge to erupt violently.
The only reason not to use En while maintaining that kind of confidence was if the person had formidable defensive Nen—
either an innate trait or a Hatsu built around it.
That made Joey curious.
Standing outside, he remotely manipulated his coin-insects,
wanting to see if the confidence was justified or simply an act.
Inside the room, saturated with the stench of rot, mildew, and vomit, were two figures:
One, Nakuru—suspended in midair by chains, unconscious or barely so.
The other—an abomination of bloody flesh and a pig's head, looming nearby, fiddling with something unidentifiable.
The pig-headed man stood nearly three meters tall, his body like a mound of muscle and fat,
bristling with spine-like tufts along his back.
His massive snout twitched suddenly.
Yellowish eyes narrowed—something had disturbed him.
He withdrew his hand from the bloody flesh, wiped it on a dark brown apron,
and turned—now holding a bone cleaver.
With a flick of his wrist,
a fly approaching his head was sliced clean in two midair.
Only, what dropped from the air weren't fly halves—
but perfectly split coins, clattering noisily onto the floor.
Still chained, Nakuru twitched slightly at the sound.
But the pig-headed man didn't notice—his attention was elsewhere.
Outside the door, Joey furrowed his brow.
He hadn't imbued his coin-insects with any Nen.
They should've been indistinguishable from real bugs.
So how had the pig-head sensed something was off?
More curiously, the pig hadn't used En at all.
Joey had picked up Nakuru's twitch through En.
Even such a small motion hadn't escaped his attention.
But he still couldn't figure out how the fly had been detected.
Fortunately, that insect had only been a probe—not a trigger for Killer Queen's First Bomb.
Had it been, the only thing destroyed would've been the cleaver.
Still, judging by the Nen and weapon, Joey reassessed.
Not a cleaver.
More like a kitchen knife—just scaled up for someone over three meters tall.
Given the room's atmosphere of blood and butchered meat,
the pig-headed man was likely both interrogator and butcher.
Cleaving a fly in half with a kitchen knife?
Joey admitted—it took some skill.
But it wasn't impressive to him.
Flies were slow.
For an experienced fighter with decent precision, slicing one was doable.
What did concern him was the Nen surge during that strike.
Though brief, it radiated killing intent so fierce
Joey felt a chill, like when he once faced Youpi.
Could this guy really burst out with Youpi-level Nen?
Joey doubted it.
Especially over a fly.
That'd be like using an artillery shell on a mosquito—pointless and overkill.
So Joey considered the possible explanations:
First: the guy was insanely cautious.
So neurotic he'd overreact to the smallest anomaly.
That would explain the fly.
People that paranoid often created unusual behavior patterns—sometimes helpful, sometimes not.
But in this case, maybe helpful to him.
If every slash was that powerful,
Joey might not need to fight at all—just spam flies until the guy exhausted himself.
Second: he couldn't control his Nen surges.
In that case, it was a trait—or more likely, a restriction of his Hatsu.
If true, Joey again just needed to keep flooding the room with coin-bugs until he broke.
Third: it was a trap.
The Nen surge was deliberate—to bait Joey into overanalyzing.
If so, then the pig had an agenda.
And Joey could discover it by watching what happened next.
Either way, he decided to press forward.
He blurred his form with refracted light, summoned a clone to his side,
and from his pocket dropped coin after coin, each transforming into a fly.
They filed neatly through vents and cracks into the room.
That's when the atmosphere changed.
There was no second slash.
Instead, the entire room pulsed with a massive surge of aura.
But it wasn't just coming from the pig-headed man.
Every slab of flesh in the room—touched by the pig's Nen—began to radiate life.
Unlike his vibrant aura, theirs reeked of blood and death.
The door burst open—not by the pig,
but by a grotesque lump of meat.
Joey, still nearby, saw it all.
Twisting red skin. Jutting, jagged bone.
The thing couldn't even be described as a proper creature—
but it casually opened the door with a scythe-like limb.
Behind it, more malformed corpses assembled, surging toward the door.
And behind them all—towered the pig-headed butcher,
a nightmare given form.
"A beastman?!" Joey blurted aloud.
He hadn't expected that.
Even though the guy's abnormal height had stood out,
he hadn't considered he might be non-human.
After all, the ship had others of absurd size—
like Botobai, Ginta, even Franklin of the Troupe.
But those were humans.
Now it was clear: the pig was a Chimera Ant descendant or beastkin,
and likely a Manipulator—controlling these grotesque flesh beasts.
Joey's clone stepped forward to block the door, coins shimmering in both hands.
He'd always thought Gotoh's ability—firing coins like bullets—
suited a clone perfectly.
Within the radius of Joey's En,
each coin fired with Gatling speed,
slamming through the flesh monsters.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The spinning coins tore gaping holes,
but the beasts didn't stop.
Even when vital parts were blown apart,
they crawled forward, dragging themselves with twitching limbs.
But Joey noticed something odd—
the monsters completely ignored the clone,
and charged directly toward Joey's real location.
"Tracking my aura?" Joey narrowed his eyes.
He replayed the situation mentally,
quickly approximating the pig's Hatsu.
Especially since the guy hadn't left the room even once—
as if it were a castle, and he its master.
Able to sense every intruder—
not just people, but any foreign life that entered.
That explained his earlier confidence.
He likely had some sixth sense, or maybe a unique danger radar,
able to detect and classify threats.
Had Joey entered directly under stealth,
he might've been killed by that first slash.
Even with En and stealth, the trap was set.
But as a pure Emitter,
Joey had no reason to close distance.
All the pig detected were Joey's constructs—
and based on their form, he chose how much power to use.
That Nen burst earlier may have also served another purpose—
like animating the flesh beasts
or locking onto the true enemy.
Joey's mind rapidly pieced it together.
Now as the monsters charged down the hall,
Joey appeared in the open.
On his shoulder, Weather Report raised a hand,
releasing a hidden wind blade he'd secretly conjured inside the room.
It didn't aim for the monsters.
It sliced directly through Nakuru's chains.
Nen-infused, even at 80% of his full Enhancement strength,
the blade was more than enough.
Nakuru dropped toward the floor—
but misty air immediately formed a white pressure suit around him, cushioning the fall.
In the same instant,
flames erupted across the entire corridor and room.
A sea of fire, licking every surface.
Joey's clone—now also donned in a white suit—charged forward through the blaze,
leaping atop the blood beasts toward the room.
And the moment he entered,
Joey felt it—
A gaze, burning more intense than anything before.
The pig-headed man, now engulfed in fire,
snorted loudly and swung his cleaver—
its blade pulsing with a terrifying surge of aura.
But before the blade fell,
one fly—the only one the pig had overlooked—
landed softly on his shoulder.
Contact made.
Click.
The mental sound of a pen clicking echoed in the pig's brain.
The cleaver fell from his hands,
clinking against the floor amidst a swirl of ash.
The fire vanished.
Wind howled, pulling Nakuru out of the inferno
into Joey's waiting arms.
They locked eyes.
But Joey's gaze flicked back toward the room.
Because even after the pig's death—
another aura remained.
Not from a person.
From the cleaver itself,
now lying on the ground,
still exuding malevolent Nen.
(End of Chapter)