Howls echoed from every direction.
The wolf—Fenrir, Liam decided, because if he was going to possess a two-hundred-pound murder machine, it deserved a name better than "Wolf #1"—went rigid beneath him.
Oh, come on.
Liam wrestled a black suit jacket off the nearest corpse. Clambered onto Fenrir's back. Draped the oversized fabric over himself like the world's worst blanket.
He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his face into matted fur, and let his consciousness sink fully into the wolf's perspective.
Fenrir bolted.
The ground blurred beneath four paws. Dead bodies flashed past like grotesque mile markers. Tall grass whipped against fur as Fenrir burst through it with the grace of a missile and the panic of someone who'd just realized the dinner special was them.
They cleared the grass.
Fenrir's paws hit dirt and skidded.
Liam's human stomach lurched as wolf-eyes adjusted to the scene ahead.
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
Wolves. Dozens of them. Surrounding them in a perfect crescent formation—left flank, right flank, center position.
Fenrir growled. Backed up slowly. The pack advanced with patient, inevitable certainty.
Liam's human body—still clinging to wolf-back under a dead man's jacket—felt like wet paper. His heart hammered arhythmically. That cold-hot wrongness still pulsed in his chest.
If I can recover some energy... maybe control another wolf...
The pack ran out of patience.
They charged with synchronized bloodlust.
Fenrir bucked hard. Liam's human body flew off, tumbled back into the tall grass.
The wolf screamed and met the pack head-on.
Claws raked Fenrir's sides. Teeth found purchase in legs, back, throat. The pain transmitted through their connection like electroshock therapy designed by sadists.
Liam yanked his consciousness back to his human body. Collapsed in the grass, gasping. Plucked a strand of hair from his scalp with trembling fingers.
Do something. Anything. Don't just lie here like a Happy Meal.
The sounds of tearing flesh stopped.
Silence. Then uneasy growls.
Liam pushed himself up. Peered through the grass.
Fenrir lay in a spreading pool of blood. The pack surrounded him but... backed away. Slowly. All eyes fixed on the same point.
The beast from the hill.
Moonlight painted it silver-blue. No—not moonlight. The creature's fur glowed. Solid blue, bright as neon signage, with stripes that pulsed like fiber optics. The mark on its forehead—a perfect "王" character—shimmered like cut sapphire.
"Roar."
The sound was polite. Conversational, even. Excuse me, I'll be murdering you now.
The wolves scattered like someone had pulled a fire alarm.
Cowards! Liam wanted to scream. There's dozens of you! One tiger! Do the math!
But the math, apparently, involved glowing tigers and survival instincts, and wolves were very good at both.
The tiger's luminous eyes found Fenrir. Then found Liam.
It approached with the lazy confidence of an apex predator who knew exactly how this story ended.
This is it. Survived wolves. Killed by technicolor death cat. What a legacy.
The tiger's massive head lowered. The mark on its forehead filled Liam's vision, getting closer, closer—
It nuzzled his head.
Gently.
Liam froze.
Is... is this thing being friendly?
The tiger made a sound that might have been purring if purring was done by creatures that could bite through engine blocks. Its tail wrapped around Liam's torso and deposited him on its broad back with all the ceremony of a forklift.
"Uh. Thanks?"
The tiger picked up the suit jacket in its teeth. Offered it to Liam like a butler presenting the morning paper.
Liam took it. Numbly slid his stick-arms through the sleeves.
Okay. Glowing tiger. Friendly glowing tiger. Sure. Why not. Today's already been weird.
He looked at his blood-crusted fingers. At the tiger's glowing back.
Could I... mark it? Control it?
The night breeze kicked up. Liam pulled the suit tighter.
Or I could NOT anger the friendly murder cat and enjoy not being eaten.
He patted the tiger's shoulder—flank? What's the tiger equivalent of a shoulder?—and pointed toward where he thought he heard running water.
The tiger turned. Began walking.
Something moved in the darkness. Fenrir. Limping but alive.
The wolf spotted them. Turned to flee.
"Come here!" Liam shouted before his brain caught up with his mouth.
Heat flared in the pentagram mark inside Fenrir's ear—Liam felt it happen, saw it with senses that shouldn't exist. The invisible fire spread through the wolf's body.
Fenrir stopped running. Turned. Trotted over wagging his tail like a golden retriever who'd just been told he was a Good Boy.
So THAT'S how it works.
Liam grinned despite himself. Spent the next hour testing his ability while the tiger carried him through the darkness.
Three control methods:
First-person: Full immersion. Liam became Fenrir, saw through wolf-eyes, moved with wolf-body. His human body operated on autopilot—breathing, balancing, not falling off the tiger. Multi-tasking without thinking about it.
Third-person: Remote control. Fenrir moved like a video game character responding to invisible commands.
Voice commands: Verbal orders. "Roll. Jump twice forward."
Fenrir rolled. Jumped. Then resumed his previous task—scouting ahead—without Liam saying another word.
Orders don't overwrite each other. They queue.
Liam laughed.
The tiger's glow intensified as the moon rose higher. Its stripes pulsed with bioluminescent beauty that belonged in a Studio Ghibli film, not reality.
Where the hell am I? Is this still Earth?
Glowing tigers. Psychic powers. Mass graves.
This is either the worst acid trip in history or—
Fenrir stopped. Sniffed the ground.
Liam switched to first-person view.
Blood. Old blood. A trail leading toward—
Salt. Ocean. The smell of low tide and rotting kelp.
Beach ahead.
He followed the blood trail through wolf-nose, building a mental image: gangsters land on shore, someone runs, chase through the field, shootout, everyone dies.
Except me. Lucky me.
The tiger crested a dune.
The ocean spread before them, black as oil under moonlight. Waves crashed against a small cruise ship wedged onto rocks twenty meters from shore. The hull was split open. Seawater poured through the wound in the ship's side.
"Please be empty," Liam muttered. He patted the tiger—Lumos, he decided, because if he was naming wolves he might as well name the glowing blue cat—and signaled for it to hang back. "You're a little conspicuous, buddy."
Fenrir leaped aboard without orders. Landed on the slanted deck with four-pawed certainty.
The cabin door hung open. Not broken. Just... unlocked.
That's not ominous at all.
Fenrir pushed inside.
Chaos. Scattered belongings in the hallway. Open doors revealing ransacked rooms. Blood spatter on the walls.
Fight happened here too. Beginning to see a pattern.
Liam steered Fenrir toward where the galley should be. His human stomach was eating itself. Needed food. Needed—
Click.
Fenrir looked down.
Newspaper. Waterlogged but readable in the pale moonlight and wolf-vision.
Liam stared at the text.
Couldn't read a single character.
But he recognized the script. Those bizarre symbols, alien yet familiar, like seeing your face in a funhouse mirror.
No. No way.
He'd seen this alphabet before. In manga panels. Fan wikis. That one anime he'd binged during a particularly irresponsible weekend.
Hunter x Hunter.
The realization hit like voltage through seawater.
The weightless water feeling when he'd first woken—that was aura. Life energy.
The pentagram marks—his Nen ability. His Hatsu.
The glowing tiger. The mass grave. The retro-tech cruise ship.
I'm in the Hunter x Hunter world.
I've isekai'd into a death tournament disguised as a shounen manga.
Liam's human body—still sitting on Lumos somewhere outside—looked up at the moon. Then at the leaf in his hand.
Water Divination.
Every Nen user had a category. Enhancement. Emission. Transmutation. Manipulation. Conjuration. Specialization.
Water Divination revealed which. Took seconds. Required a glass of water and a leaf.
If this works, I'll know for sure.
He slid off Lumos. The tiger huffed but didn't protest.
Liam ran into the ship. His child-body moved like wet spaghetti but adrenaline helped. Found Fenrir waiting by a sink in the galley.
The wolf held a plastic cup in his jaws. Half-filled with water.
Liam took the cup. Set it on the counter. Placed the leaf on the water's surface.
His hands shook.
This is it. Proof. One way or another.