Meteor

Under the violent impact, the sedan's front end was badly crushed, nearly fused with the tree trunk by the roadside.

Thick white smoke billowed from the twisted, deformed hood, with flickers of flame barely visible within.

Twelve hundred meters away, on a slope beside the road.

A man in camouflage lay prone behind the slope, a sniper rifle braced before him.

"Continue."

A cold voice came through the sniper's earpiece.

Upon receiving the order, the sniper aimed at the mangled sedan, half-obscured by thick smoke. Relying on instinct to pinpoint the rough location of the driver's seat, he pulled the trigger.

A crisp crack rang out.

A long, pointed bullet shot from the suppressor, trailing a fleeting streak of fire as it tore through the night and struck the sedan shrouded in white smoke.

Then came another shot, then two, then three...

The sniper worked the bolt and fired until he quickly emptied the magazine.

With the white smoke blocking his view, every shot had been placed based on experience.

But as long as the target was trapped in the driver's seat, he had absolute confidence in those shots.

After emptying the magazine, the sniper immediately reloaded.

He did not fire again. While awaiting further orders, he observed the wrecked sedan, now ablaze, through his scope, along with every movement in the surrounding area.

Boom—

Suddenly, the sedan exploded in a burst of burning fuel.

Flames surged into the sky, driving the rolling smoke even higher.

The heat-laden blast instantly flattened the surrounding grass.

And behind a large tree several meters away.

Moro leaned against the trunk, a cold glint in his eyes.

Dirt and grime stained many parts of his body.

Fortunately, the defensive effect of Nen power had protected him. When he had forced his way through the front passenger door amid the thick smoke, neither sharp debris nor shattered glass had injured him.

He had then used the cover of night to dash into the roadside woods, taking one of the nearby trees as cover while waiting for the sniper's next move.

The sniper's repeated shots at the sedan confirmed for Moro that his current cover was safe for the moment.

Still, he did not dare move rashly, lest the sniper lock onto his position immediately.

Moro steadied the lingering tremor in his heart.

"What happened just now?"

Recalling that split second between life and death, a flicker of bewilderment crossed Moro's eyes.

When the bullet had sliced through the night toward him, he had seemed to smell death. Before the windshield shattered, a flash of warning had burst through his mind like sudden inspiration.

In that state, he had instinctively tilted his head, evading what would have been a fatal shot.

Given his current level of aura, even if he had managed to use "Gyo" in time to reinforce a specific area's defenses, he still could not have withstood a sniper rifle round.

And when caught off guard, the speed at which he could set up a defense with "Gyo" would never surpass a bullet.

In that situation, only truly dodging the bullet could have saved his life.

But at its root, it was still a matter of insufficient hardware.

At this stage, both his maximum manifested aura output and the intensity of his "Ren" were not enough for him to face a high-powered weapon like a sniper rifle.

If his hardware had been strong enough, he could have blocked a sniper rifle shot even without using Gyo to reinforce a specific area.

So for Moro right now, he would rather face a Nen user at close range than deal with the long-range threat of a sniper rifle.

In a sense, a sniper rifle was harder to deal with than a Nen user like Zazan.

It was frustrating, but it was reality.

Moro raised a hand to touch his earlobe. There was blood on it.

If not for that momentary sense of danger...

Moro let out a long breath, suppressing his shock as a grave look slowly emerged in his eyes.

"If I don't take out that sniper..."

The ever-present threat of being targeted by a sniper would severely limit his mobility.

If there were other enemies in this situation, he would be in even greater danger.

The one piece of good news was that there was only one sniper.

If there had been another sniper, then even if he did not die, he would have been left half-dead.

"At least a thousand meters away..."

The sniper's consecutive shots had seemed to show no concern for revealing his position, and they had also given Moro an opportunity.

Yet even after determining the position, closing the distance remained a difficult problem.

The longer the distance, the greater the danger it contained.

If he chose to avoid battle and move away from the sniper's direction, then without knowing the opponent's maximum range, he would essentially be exposing his back.

If there was more than one attacker, then no matter what choice he made, his situation could become even more dangerous.

That was the most troublesome part.

And compared to taking out the sniper as quickly as possible, what mattered more right now was confirming the number of attackers.

If conditions allowed, it would be even better to determine their positions.

That way, whether he advanced or retreated, he could do so far more calmly.

Under normal circumstances, that was how he would think—

But Moro had another option.

Confirming the number of attackers, then locating them afterward...

All of that required time.

And in his current predicament, every passing second increased the unknown risks he faced.

The worst-case scenario was that the sniper would change positions and pressure him from the shadows.

So rather than gathering information during a standoff, Moro preferred to attempt a swift kill on the sniper.

And he could not hesitate in making that decision.

Before the sniper's confidence—the confidence that had made him willing to expose his position just to fire repeatedly—vanished, Moro had to use the positional information he had already obtained and take him down with lightning speed.

"There's only one chance."

Moro closed his eyes, constructing one linear diagram after another in his mind.

The distribution of the surrounding trees, the sedan still explosively burning, the gently undulating road, and the distant slope ahead of the road...

Moro eliminated every obstacle along a straight path one by one, searching for another suitable trajectory.

A few seconds later.

Moro opened his eyes, Nen aura gleaming within them.

"Deceptive Flying Stars."

He raised his hand and adjusted the angle.

Bright Nen aura gathered in his palm, condensing into a flying star the size of a fist.

Whoosh—

The flying star shot out like an arrow, passing through branches and leaves before hovering in midair a hundred meters away.

At the same time.

Moro suddenly dashed out from behind the tree and stopped at the position he had already calculated. Then he watched as the flying star expanded and shot back toward him.

As the flying star reached his face, Moro twisted aside at the critical instant.

The light emitted by the flying star flashed through Moro's eyes, then, like a meteor, it pierced through a gap in the nearby woods and flew toward the distant sniper.

The second stage of Deceptive Flying Stars—Swallow Return—

While it granted the vow's effect of doubled firing speed and power, it also imposed the restriction that it would inflict equivalent damage upon Moro.

Based on that premise, when Moro timed it precisely and dodged the returning flying star...

The Swallow Return Flying Star would, under the restriction's effect, break free from its "flight distance" limit. And until it struck an obstacle, its power would not diminish with distance.

By exploiting the mechanism of the restriction, Moro had pushed the flying star's range beyond its original hundred-meter limit.

In an instant—

Like a meteor streaking through the sky, it shot straight toward a target a thousand meters away.

At the same time.

On the distant slope, the sniper noticed Moro suddenly exposing himself.

He swiftly locked on, controlled his breathing, and pressed the trigger.

"Hmm!?"

Just as the sniper was about to fire, a burst of blinding light suddenly filled his scope.

"What...?!"

The sniper jerked his head up.

The next instant, the slope before him exploded.

The violent shockwave, carrying sand and shattered stone, swallowed the sniper whole.

In the blink of an eye, the sniper was blasted backward. His body was riddled with holes like a torn sack, utterly dead.

In another direction.

A sinister-looking young man stared fixedly at the explosion, his face filled with disbelief.

He had seen the Nen Bullet that had crossed a thousand meters like a meteor.

"From that far away... it still had that much power?"

After taking off his earpiece, which crackled with static, the sinister young man looked from the blast site toward Moro's position.

Emitter Nen users were better at projecting their aura outward, but even so, maintaining both the power and stability of a Nen Bullet at such a distance was no easy feat.

For a moment, the sinister young man hesitated over whether to continue closing in.