Plans for Their First Meeting

As Uvogin and Nobunaga burst in.

Uvogin and Nobunaga stood with their mouths wide open, staring at the scene inside the room in disbelief.

"Hey, hey, this is too much," Nobunaga murmured. "Can a Nen Ability really do something like this...?"

Uvogin, standing beside him, clapped him hard on the shoulder and grinned broadly as he said loudly.

"What are you talking about, Nobunaga? Don't forget, this is Ian!"

"Only Ian could pull off a miracle like this!"

Thinking of all the delicacies they had tasted thanks to Ian over the past few days, foods they had never seen in Meteor City, Nobunaga slapped his cheeks, trying to snap himself out of it.

"Yeah... If it's Ian, then it all makes sense."

The two of them looked carefully around Machi's cabin, marveling at everything they saw.

"No matter how I look at it, I can't imagine how you did it, Ian. You actually made Machi's place so huge."

Ian chuckled.

"What you're seeing is just an illusion. It's all thanks to a new tool, the Set-Building Machine."

"Fake!?"

Uvogin and Nobunaga cried out in unison.

Having said that, they still didn't believe it and hurried a few steps forward. Sure enough, they soon felt the wall.

Only then did the two murmur, looking stunned.

"Is there really such lifelike painting in this world...?"

Ian smiled beside them and explained, sounding a little proud.

"For the Set-Building Machine, lifelike images are just an added effect. What's truly amazing about it is that it can perfectly recreate a scene from your mind in the real world."

"With it, even creating a palace out of thin air in an instant is easy!"

"Wow!"

Although they still had no idea what the Set-Building Machine's limits were.

Ian's simple description was enough to make Uvogin and Nobunaga realize that the tool's function wasn't so simple.

It could build a palace from imagination alone?

No matter how they thought about it, neither of them dared imagine how a tool like that could perform such a miracle.

"By the way, Ian, I've gotten in touch with some reliable friends. Do you want to meet them?"

After the shock wore off, Uvogin seemed to remember something. He slapped his forehead and spoke to Ian.

Ian smiled and said softly.

"Sure. It'd be good for everyone to meet and get to know each other first."

Meeting the Phantom Troupe's members was unavoidable.

Then, led by Uvogin and Nobunaga, Ian and Machi left the cabin at midday to meet up with them.

Ian remained quite calm along the way.

After all, most of the Phantom Troupe's members were still just children like Uvogin.

They probably hadn't mastered Nen Abilities yet.

They posed no threat to Ian as he was now.

Besides, at this point in time, they had yet to grow into the lawless Spiders.

A person's growth was shaped by their experiences.

Even Chrollo, without enough room to grow, was worlds apart from his future self.

The four left Machi's cabin together and made their way through Meteor City.

Perhaps the grassland scenery they had just seen inside Machi's cabin had been so breathtaking that the impression had yet to fade from their minds.

As they walked along the slum-like streets of Meteor City.

Both Uvogin and Nobunaga were as wilted as frost-bitten eggplants...

So the place they lived in was actually this awful.

Yellow sand filled the air in Meteor City year-round, and with countless mountains of garbage surrounding it, the air quality was worrying.

After seeing the grassland scenery Ian had created, even the elders' district they had once longed for seemed unremarkable, and they couldn't muster any interest in it.

"Hey, Ian, this is all your fault. Now I can't get interested in anything..." Uvogin said listlessly as they walked.

"Anyone who saw scenery like that would probably feel disappointed by the place we're in now," Machi said, her little face calm.

"Exactly. But do those grasslands you made for Machi really exist in this world, Ian?" Nobunaga asked, glancing sideways at Ian.

Hearing the three of them, Ian simply smiled and said softly.

"Of course they exist..."

"That's also why I plan to take you out of Meteor City."

"In fact, it's not just grasslands. There are even more magnificent and beautiful sights in this world!"

"This world is vast and full of the unknown. It's far from being fully explored."

"And with the power we possess, we could even become pioneers exploring unknown regions."