Testing x Awareness

What he had feared had happened.

And it was an openly brazen attack, with no regard for the passengers' reactions or lives.

The moment that Aura erupted, Moro's first instinct was to head to the airship's cockpit and assess the situation.

As he neared the cockpit, he heard the deafening noise that had carried throughout the entire airship.

Moro had no interest in investigating the cause behind that tremendous sound, much less getting dragged into it.

His only concern was whether the airship could land safely.

But after probing with En, he realized that the captain and other crew members had most likely already been controlled.

This was probably the worst possible outcome.

"Sir, please return to your room immediately and wait for further notice..."

Suddenly, an anxious female voice came from the other end of the corridor.

Moro looked toward the sound.

A young woman in a flight attendant's uniform hurried toward him, her face filled with anxiety.

Moro's gaze swept swiftly over the flight attendant. Nothing seemed unusual, but...

He abruptly raised a hand and condensed a marble-sized Nen ball at the tip of his upright index finger.

Then, without waiting for the flight attendant's reaction, he flicked his finger. The white Nen ball shot toward her at once.

The instant the Nen ball left Moro's fingertip, the flight attendant's movements suddenly froze. She then tilted her head back slightly and rolled her eyes upward.

Moro narrowed his eyes.

The next moment.

The Nen ball passed by the flight attendant's ear and struck the wall at the end of the corridor with a soft tap.

It was merely an ordinary Nen ball meant for testing...

It could certainly harm an ordinary person, but it would be difficult for it to break through even basic Nen defenses.

And from the start, Moro had never intended for the Nen ball to hit her.

Yet the flight attendant's reaction took him quite by surprise.

Thud!

Still rolling her eyes, the flight attendant's body tilted as she collapsed to the floor.

Moro, who had been watching closely, sharply noticed that before she hit the ground, the shadow cast by the lights had vanished into thin air.

And as the shadow disappeared, the flight attendant's life force was cut off, leaving behind a corpse.

"Manipulation."

Moro instantly confirmed his earlier suspicion. The corner of his eye glanced toward the cockpit door not far away before he looked back at the corpse on the ground.

The ability controlling the flight attendant seemed to have some connection to shadows.

Moreover, controlled people were no different from normal people, whether in their words, actions, or the Aura naturally dissipating from their bodies.

If the flight attendant had not reacted so strongly just now, testing the truth at once would likely have required the ruthless mindset of killing rather than risking a mistake.

But it was precisely that stress reaction from the flight attendant that concerned Moro.

The advantage of Manipulators usually lay in using their controlled targets to perform various tasks.

In other words, there was no need to care whether the controlled target lived or died.

Aside from suggestion-type and contract-type Manipulation abilities, other kinds, such as coercive Manipulation abilities, were effectively depriving the target of life the moment control was imposed.

So what had just happened felt intensely unnatural.

There was clearly no need to care whether the controlled person survived, yet the ability had been withdrawn with absolute decisiveness just before the attack landed.

It was as though—

The user was wary of, or afraid of, some kind of consequence?

For example, did damage inflicted on the controlled target directly rebound onto the ability user?

So was it a Manipulation ability similar to soul invasion...?

This type of ability could directly occupy a target's body, allowing for perfect impersonation while fulfilling real-time needs for sensory feedback and speech.

In exchange, its restrictions might involve the risk of damage being transmitted directly to the user.

If that was the case, it could more or less explain what had happened.

To further confirm this speculation...

Moro condensed another Nen ball at his fingertips, then flicked it out.

Whoosh—

The small Nen ball struck the corpse's head with a light, muffled thud.

A moment later.

Blood seeped out from beneath the corpse's head.

"The ability really has been withdrawn."

Moro looked once more toward the cockpit door and thought, The attacker is targeting Kangzai's side, but he also controlled a flight attendant to stop me... Is he waiting for a chance to attack me, or does he simply not want me entering the cockpit?

As he considered this, Moro released his En and walked to the cockpit door.

Fortunately, he was an Emitter, which made it easier for him to learn an application technique like En. That allowed it to play a crucial role at this moment.

The reason he had tested the flight attendant earlier was because of the disturbance created by the attacker, as well as what he had detected inside the cockpit with En...

"Two people. Still no response."

Moro damaged the cockpit door's lock, then pushed the door open and entered.

At a glance, he saw two people in captain uniforms standing before the airship's control console. They were likely this airship's captain and co-pilot.

Moro silently observed the captain and co-pilot, seeing a small amount of Aura lingering across their bodies.

Then his gaze dropped to behind them.

Under the cockpit lights, they were missing the shadows that should have been there.

Tap, tap—

Moro moved to one side of the cockpit.

The clearly controlled captain and co-pilot showed no reaction to his arrival, as though they had become puppets following a fixed routine.

Moro stopped. From his angle, he could see the captain and co-pilot operating the airship on their own, their eyes filled with nothing but white...

This was clearly an ability effect that drove controlled targets through commands.

"Two modes of manipulation?"

Moro stared at the two puppets before the airship's console.

One took control of the controlled person's body through soul invasion, achieving perfect impersonation, but seemingly at tremendous risk.

The other turned people into puppets that followed commands, but the puppets' white eyes and lack of shadows visibly exposed information.

"If he doesn't show himself, he'll be hard to find."

Moro frowned.

En was an excellent technique for locating enemies, but it consumed a great deal of mental and physical energy.

With a battle already underway on Kangzai's side, using En to gradually search the airship for a Manipulator hiding somewhere within it was highly unrealistic.

In truth, if he knew how to land an airship, things would not have been so complicated...

Inside a cabin on the lower level.

Someone was tied to a chair, deeply unconscious.

Light shone down from above, stretching a long human shadow across the floor.

Suddenly.

A person emerged from the pitch-black shadow out of nowhere. It was Kawahara.

"I've been noticed..."

Kawahara's expression was rather grim.

If not for the sudden disruption, his ability would have allowed him to slowly gain control over every ordinary person aboard the airship, turning the entire vessel into the home ground of his Shadow's End.

Then, when the time was right, he could activate the control switches one by one and capture Moro alive in a single stroke.

Who would have thought that two other groups aboard the airship would start fighting?

This unexpected development had completely disrupted his plans, and furthermore...

The target was highly perceptive and might even have already noticed the effects of Shadow's End.

Capturing the target alive had undoubtedly become even more difficult.