Three nights later.
He had only eaten a small half of the dry rations in his hand when Kisho's brows suddenly knit together.
Someone was approaching.
Extremely fast.
That shouldn't be possible… He had chosen this place far away from that settlement—
Kisho rushed out of his garbage nest, and in the very next second, an entire mountain of trash came crashing down on him.
Countless pieces of garbage smashed into the spot where Kisho had been standing. After landing, Kisho fixed his gaze on the man standing atop the garbage pile that had already been flattened.
The man was wearing a white shirt with jeans, staring at Kisho with a ruthless gaze. His eyes carried the interest of spotting prey, and the excitement of a hunt in progress.
Kisho's heart sank abruptly.
The man spoke:
"Not bad, kid. At such a young age, you already have Nen—didn't expect that. Those old ghosts didn't die for nothing."
This person mentioned "Nen".
Kisho's expression darkened.
"Gyo."
After channeling aura into his eyes, he saw the "Ten" shrouding the man's body.
"Ah, I wonder how long you'll survive." A bloodthirsty glint flashed in the man's eyes. "It really gets me… excited—!"
"Bang—!"
Before the man even finished speaking, he was already in front of Kisho. The speed was so fast that even with "Gyo", Kisho couldn't react. He only had time to raise his arms to block before being sent flying backward, smashing into the garbage heap behind him.
"Cough… cough…"
The collapsing pile of trash buried Kisho within it.
"Ah, this place would make a decent grave for you. After all, garbage should die in a garbage heap."
The man's voice drifted over faintly.
A fireball howled toward him, but he dodged it effortlessly.
The man laughed mockingly.
"Kid, was that fireworks you just set off? Pretty nice! Hahahaha!"
Kisho clenched his fists and crawled out of the pile of trash burying him. Looking at the distant firelight, his expression grew more serious than ever before.
"…The speed of Nen attacks is even slower than my own speed… Attacks like that can't possibly work."
Moreover, this man's physical ability and combat experience—just from taking that single punch earlier—were clearly not something Kisho could handle at his current level.
The man stared at Kisho, savoring his grim expression, the corners of his mouth curling up.
"What, is the fireworks show over?"
"Then it's my turn to attack—"
The instant those words filled with killing intent rang out, the man vanished from where he stood.
Kisho's pupils contracted sharply. In a single breath, Nen gathered within his body, then burst outward violently. The shockwave flattened the nearby garbage hills and shoved the man—who had been mere inches away—far back.
In the next moment, Kisho concentrated Nen into his legs and dashed off in a certain direction.
"Kid! Where do you think you're running?! Just die already! I'll leave you a whole corpse—hahahaha!!!"
The man chased after him at terrifying speed, his laughter brimming with cruelty.
As he ran, Kisho ignited the surrounding garbage piles with fire, then used Nen to fling the burning trash high into the air. Using the shadows cast by unburned garbage, he concealed his figure.
But… no matter how dazzling the sea of flames became, the man still kept pace roughly twenty meters behind him, savoring the thrill of the chase.
In less than a minute, Kisho had already run a full kilometer.
His speed gradually slowed—as if he were utterly exhausted.
The man snarled with a grin:
"—Kid! Tired from setting off fireworks already? Keep going! I'm not satisfied yet!"
Panting, Kisho once again ignited and overturned the surrounding garbage—trash and flames swirling together into the sky.
"That move again?! Kid! No matter where you hide, it's useless!"
Ignoring the sea of fire, all those flashy tricks meant nothing to him. His eyes were filled with the bloodthirsty delight of a cat toying with a mouse. To him, the Nen on Kisho's body was the best possible guide.
He leapt high, his figure vanishing, and seized Kisho midair, slamming him hard down onto the garbage mountain beneath his feet.
But the sensation in his hand felt nothing like—
The man's expression changed drastically.
What he was holding was merely a wooden plank over a meter long…
At the same time, the garbage mountain beneath his feet began to tremble. Before he could react, a pillar of fire shot straight into the sky. The violent explosion sounded as though the entire Meteor City could hear it.
After the thunderous blast and towering flames, the burned-out fragments of garbage drifted down slowly. The entire garbage mountain where the man had stood was blown flat, leaving behind only a circular crater.
Kisho stood atop another garbage mound, staring at the deep pit not far away.
...
Kisho found over a dozen empty nuclear-waste iron barrels. He removed the tops and bottoms, then welded them together with fire.
Then he stuffed the barrels with all kinds of rotten fruit and vegetable leaves, any animal carcasses he could find, along with chemical waste scavenged from District Twelve—throwing in all sorts of junk.
Next, he heated the outside of the barrels with fire to accelerate the decay inside, then poured in polluted water from the river in District Twelve. He found a thin sheet of metal and sealed the barrels shut.
Finally, he buried the entire barrel deep inside a garbage pile, packing hard trash tightly around it, then piling dark-colored garbage with good heat conduction on top, leaving it exposed under the sun for three days.
...
Kisho guessed that the man was using "Gyo" to lock onto his position, but what he was seeing might not be Kisho himself, but the "Ten" around his body.
That was why Kisho kept using Nen to fling garbage and set it on fire, using the blazing flames to obscure his position—he knew it wasn't very effective, but his true goal was to mislead the man into thinking that this was his only trick, and that he had no idea Nen could be suppressed.
Then, he casually picked up a wooden plank roughly similar to his own size and coated it with Nen—this was a technique he had learned in the past few days. Though it only covered a very thin layer, it was practically useless on its own.
Finally, he threw the plank while completely suppressing his own Nen.
If that man was only focused on the "Ten" on Kisho's body, then amid the flying, burning garbage and blazing firelight, influenced by habitual thinking, he wouldn't be able to tell what exactly was carrying the "Ten".
Kisho admitted there was a gamble involved. No matter how precise a plan was, accidents could still happen—but fortunately, his luck held this time. The man, as expected, charged straight toward the plank.
To further reduce the chances of failure, Kisho also provided ample cues during his escape: slowing down, coughing, panting—everything was meant to entertain the man, suggesting that the game was nearing its end, letting excitement dominate his mind so he wouldn't think too carefully anymore.
Just as Kisho hoped, the man grabbed the plank and naturally ended up standing on the garbage mountain.
Meanwhile, Kisho used the few seconds of stunned realization—when the man discovered he'd only caught a plank—to coat a stone with Nen fire. He applied "Gyo" to his wrist, giving the stone enough force to punch through layers of garbage, pierce the barrel, and ignite the methane gas inside.
After the flames shot skyward and the dust settled, victory and defeat were decided.
...
Kisho stared at the deep pit. The man inside had been blown beyond all recognition.
Using Gyo, Kisho watched the body in the pit for a long time. Only after seeing no trace of "Ten" did he finally jump down, slowly walking over to the corpse.
"He's really dead through and through."
After checking the body, Kisho murmured softly as he stared at him.
He thought he would vomit upon getting close to a corpse, but unexpectedly, he didn't.
Knowing someone wanted to kill him, how could he possibly make no preparations at all?
He had prepared himself, so he knew—
Either he would die, or he would kill.
Ah, this time… he really had killed someone.
But why… did he not feel… disgusted, or distressed at all?
Kisho thought that perhaps it was because, just like this world, he too had already broken.
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Pls Drop some Power Stones
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