Absolute Zero

Bang! Bang! Bang! A group of people sealed off every angle from which Oboro might dodge or escape. The instant his limbs moved, the three fastest among them lunged at him simultaneously. In a flash, the four of them exchanged punches and kicks like machine-gun fire.

Oboro pushed Chinese Martial Arts to its limit. Amid their dense barrage of attacks, his body movement and footwork still allowed him to shift positions within an extremely confined space, pulling and maneuvering with near perfection... Then, in less than a second, he caught an opening exposed by one of them.

He lowered his waist, bent his elbow, and unleashed God Fist.

The force of the punch shook the air, making it churn and turn scorching hot.

But... the three of them leaped away in an instant, clearing the way.

A man whose arm transformed into a shield charged forward and forcibly took Oboro's punch.

A deafening explosion rang out.

The shield pressed before him caved in, and he could not stop himself from sliding back twenty or thirty meters. Only after the soles of his shoes had been ground apart did he steady himself. The raised shield reverted to an arm. He looked at Oboro and shouted in both shock and excitement, "Now that's some power!"

The bones in his arm had already twisted slightly, showing signs of fracture.

As Oboro drove that man back, a ghostly figure as nimble as a leopard swept past his side and darted behind him.

A fleeting cold gleam flashed across Oboro's body, followed by a spray of blood.

"Hehehe... No matter how strong you are... you can't possibly deal with more than a dozen of us at once!" The man behind him, having succeeded in his sneak attack, licked the brass knuckles on his hands. They were stained with Oboro's blood as he sneered mockingly.

His brass knuckles were not of a conventional design. Several-centimeter-long hidden blades extended from the fingertips, and in an instant, cuts had been opened across every joint on Oboro's body.

Joints... If they were seriously damaged, his movements would inevitably become distorted or sluggish!

These people were fighting with their brains!

They... were treating Oboro as prey. They were hunting him!

Oboro remained unmoved, his expression calm.

To battle more than a dozen Nen users with unknown abilities, the information his brain needed to process—including every response his body had to make—had reached an unprecedented limit... He did not even have time to catch his breath... The enemy's offensive would not pause for even a moment!

Everyone present was fully focused.

Oboro's brain... was like an overheating CPU, liable to overload at any moment! Whoosh! Suddenly, two more people rushed to his side. They were Enhancement types!

Relying on his keen perception of their aura, Oboro endured the injuries to his joints and dodged... Yet just as he shifted position, someone grabbed him from behind. That person's limbs were soft and boneless, like rubber clay. His arms and legs clung to Oboro's torso and wrapped around him.

He had forcibly restricted Oboro's movements! It could not be helped... Oboro was facing too many opponents! Sometimes, sheer numbers truly could change things... It felt like being besieged by a pack of hungry wolves. More importantly, none of these dozen people were ordinary.

"Just wait obediently for death..."

The Nen user clinging to Oboro laughed coldly, tightening the limbs wrapped around him with tremendous force! His companions had already seized the opportunity and attacked Oboro.

They were about to succeed!

However, the man on his back felt his eyelids twitch. He realized that one of Oboro's arms, which he had bound, was being freed bit by bit through brute force!

The next second, there was a wet squelch.

One of Oboro's hands broke free from the restraint of the man's arm. With his fingers held together like a sword, he thrust backward.

He pierced the man's throat in a single breath! Yet that Nen user did not release Oboro. Instead, the Nen he was exerting intensified even further, making Oboro's body even harder to move... His willpower was astonishing. Even in death, he wanted to buy time for his companions! Clearly... he succeeded! His breathing had become faint as a thread as a swarm of dark figures rushed in...

First, someone kicked Oboro in the back of the knee from behind, forcing him down onto one knee. Immediately afterward, a dagger stabbed precisely into his abdomen. The muscles in Oboro's stomach tightened instantly, clamping down on the blade and minimizing the damage.

Then, someone pinned one of his arms and pressed down on his shoulder with a grappling hold, reducing the chance of retaliation! Another Nen user jumped onto his back, holding a "giant syringe" in both hands, and plunged its needle into Oboro's body.

Strangely, Oboro felt no pain from the needle... It was as though the thing caused no physical damage at all. But as the man pulled the syringe plunger, Oboro's aura was crazily siphoned away like water, causing both his Nen and his presence to grow weaker and weaker.

Oboro had been suppressed! In truth, only a short time had passed since the battle began—no more than two or three minutes.

Facing more than a dozen elite Nen users who feared no death, he truly could not gain much of an advantage. The key was that, because of their numbers, it was equivalent to facing more than a dozen unknown Nen abilities...

"Watch me suck every last bit of your Nen dry... Hehehe..."

The person standing on Oboro's back let out a smug shriek of laughter.

"This ability... is Exorcism?" Oboro's heart stirred.

His current situation... looked very bad.

"You should thank our boss... He said we were to wait until he came back personally before dealing with you. Otherwise, you'd already be dead at our hands..." Uka, the woman holding a ball of yarn, came to Oboro's side. After crouching down, she wiped a hand across his bleeding abdomen, then smeared the blood onto the ball of thread in her hands.

Then, the ball of yarn began to squirm like a living creature, rapidly crossing and weaving itself. Before long, it had woven a small foot for a plush doll... and was still repairing it bit by bit.

"Don't move! The boss's orders take top priority, but you're dangerous... So... if you make even the slightest movement, I'll kill you!"

Green gripped a bat and aimed it at Oboro's head. Beneath the brim of his cap, his eyes were unusually cold.

It was a warning.

"Green, aren't you making too much of this? This guy can't move anymore, hahaha!"

Someone laughed.

"How is he?"

Seeing that the situation had been brought under control, at least in the eyes of the Nen users, Green glanced at a companion walking over and asked.

"Dead..."

The other man answered grimly.

They were referring to the first person who had attacked Oboro, the one who had been smashed into the ground... Though he had avoided Oboro's follow-up kick and lingered for a while, he had still lost his life.

It had only been one direct clash, and he died...

Of eighteen people, two were dead and one seriously injured! This had already exceeded their expectations. They had thought... that taking one life would already be the limit of what Oboro could do!

They were not worthless weaklings...

"How long?"

Green looked again at Uka and the changing bundle of yarn in her hands.

"It'll be slow... At least ten minutes."

"Once the curse is bound, killing him will be effortless..." Uka said confidently.

At that moment, the Nen user who had been binding Oboro with his limbs finally died completely, and his corpse slipped down to the ground.

"Careful!"

The Nen user holding Oboro's shoulder in a grappling lock suddenly shrank his pupils and gave a low cry. He was the first to sense the slight changes in Oboro's body and muscles!

With a crack, Oboro's shoulder was dislocated.

That man had not expected Oboro to endure the injury just to counterattack. He was that ruthless!

Did he really not care about living?

The man standing on Oboro's back jumped away alertly with the "syringe." He was not a close-combat Nen user; avoiding danger came first!

Oboro's crouched body suddenly sprang up, his speed astonishing. He twisted at the waist and swung his backhand, immediately striking the cheek of the man restraining him. In a blur, half of that man's face was gone... He fell straight backward.

His eyes were filled with disbelief!

Then Oboro reached out with a huge hand and grabbed for Uka.

His instincts told him that this woman's ability was troublesome!

With a thwack, a bat struck Oboro's hand, and the bones in the back of his hand cracked...

It was Green! The boy stared straight at Oboro, his gaze savage. Veins bulged across his forehead as he swung the bat at lightning speed toward Oboro's temple! Another one had been killed! Green was furious...

"Die..."

Since Oboro wanted to die, Green would grant his wish.

At the same time, the others in front of him attacked together! "Half my Nen has been drained..." Oboro lowered his eyes and looked at the mangled flesh on the back of his hand. Suddenly, he smiled. "Your eyes weren't fixed on me the whole time... That's very unprofessional."

He was speaking to Green.

Yes, at least in everyone else's eyes, under those circumstances... Oboro had almost ceased to be a threat.

Now one of his arms had been dislocated, he was injured, and half his Nen was gone... Why? What right did this man still have to fight them?

He could not win from the beginning, much less now!

"The one letting his guard down isn't just you. It's all of you..."

"I deliberately drew you over and gathered you together..."

As Oboro murmured and that strange smile appeared on his face, his Nen suddenly ignited like flames.

In an instant, a phantom resembling a spirit manifested around him. It was a mighty beast carrying a little boy, covered in thick fur and bearing horns.

The hero Oboro had chosen was Nunu and Willump!

The beast roared. Centered on Oboro, a terrifying blizzard instantly erupted, bitterly cold.

The wind and snow carried blades of ice.

The curtain of wind was so violent that the dozen people within its range could barely move... Their vision was a sheet of white, and they could not break free from the hurricane's restraint.

This was... the game's rules, the slowing effect of a skill! Oboro had unleashed the hero's ultimate, Absolute Zero!

A domain of wind and snow had formed! While channeling the skill, Oboro gained a shield. Thus... Green and the others nearby did not stop attacking, and all of their blows landed on him, but they were canceled out by a thick shield of crusted ice.

Within the blizzard... Oboro looked at the boy before him, whose expression had gone blank, whose clothes fluttered wildly, and whose face had become covered in dense white frost. He said calmly, "If you see yourself as a hunter, then so long as the target isn't dead, the hunt isn't over... Anything is possible. A qualified hunter kills every possibility in the cradle. In that regard, none of you are qualified."

After saying that, the skill's channeling ended.

Boom! At that moment, countless razor-sharp gusts and ice blades sliced wildly through the domain before exploding with a thunderous roar! More than a dozen battered figures, riddled with wounds like rag dolls, were swept away by the rushing winds...

Silence...

Ice crystals and drifting snow covered the ground...

Oboro exhaled a stream of hot white breath, moved a little, and reset his dislocated shoulder.

"This ultimate... feels pretty damn good..."

Speaking from the perspective of a player, he could not help but sincerely marvel at it. Both the visuals and the effect were explosive.

No wonder he had invested so much time and effort when constructing heroes in the Game World.

At present, compared to the other major categories in the game, heroes had the slowest creation progress and demanded the most effort.

Even now, he had created only a little over twenty heroes.