Welcome Home

Among the heroes Oboro had created so far, aside from Nunu and Willump, there were also Master Yi and Kassadin.

At first, he had wanted to choose either Master Yi or Kassadin.

But he quickly gave up on the idea.

The reason he had not chosen them... was because there were too many variables.

Master Yi's Highlander and Kassadin's Riftwalk could grant him incredible speed and the ability to appear and disappear like a phantom, but there were simply too many enemies... With their Nen abilities still unknown, they were not suitable choices.

Because both Master Yi and Kassadin were highly vulnerable to being "restrained"... If he could not cut the enemy's numbers by more than half in a short time, the scales would tip against him... Oboro did not like taking risks.

He liked fighting and enjoyed fighting. It was a pursuit, a desire for self-growth... not a craving for thrills like Hisoka.

He was afraid of dying...

So he would not put himself in danger.

He needed to... end the battle quickly, in one go.

Therefore, after weighing his options, the best hero available to him... was Nunu & Willump.

"My Nen... is running low..."

Oboro murmured.

His injuries were manageable... He had deliberately guided the flow of the battle and avoided several fatal wounds. His abdominal injury was the worst, but it had not damaged any internal organs.

If the fight had dragged on... the outcome would have been hard to say.

If the "beast" by Ten Don Brown's side had been there, and the number of Nen users had risen to around thirty... Oboro would never have faced them head-on! There were many ways to fight... Using the terrain and environment to pick them off one by one was the optimal solution.

The hero he chose might have been different, too...

He would only try something like this if there were only a dozen or so people.

He had confidence in himself! But he did not think he could defeat an entire armed squad of Nen users under Brown in a direct confrontation.

Different circumstances called for different solutions. He had to stay adaptable.

Across the plaza, people lay scattered everywhere. Some were dead... while some still had a faint breath left in them...

Oboro walked over to a corpse and looked down.

The lower half of the woman named Uka had been torn apart, and her face was unrecognizable. Yet frost had formed over her wounds and was slowly melting away. There was no bleeding... Her ball of yarn had vanished.

She was not a Conjuration type. This woman had been a Specialization type...

Once that ball of yarn had woven itself into a little doll, Oboro had had a feeling... something bad would have happened! He then walked over to Green. The boy's chest rose and fell faintly... His face had been shredded apart, and even his eyeballs had burst...

"You're still conscious?"

Oboro raised a brow.

What a pity...

At the boy's age, reaching this level was already exceptionally impressive.

If they had not been enemies, Oboro might have offered him some "guidance."

As his words faded, Green's life force cut off.

Oboro finished off the few people who were still alive one by one... Then he came before the least injured person at the scene.

Least injured... only in comparison to the dead.

The man's entire body was covered in countless cuts carved by wind and snow, a horrifying sight... But he still mostly retained a "human" shape.

His pupils were unfocused as he lay on the ground.

He was the one who had used a syringe to draw Nen power... He had leapt away immediately, but he had not gotten far enough. He seemed to have intended to exploit an opening, letting his companions restrain Oboro first. By the time the blizzard descended, it had been too late for him to flee...

"I can save you. Do you want to live?"

Oboro stopped before him and spoke.

The man's eyes shifted slightly, but his body was too badly damaged for him to speak.

"You're an Exorcist?"

Seeing him seem about to lose consciousness, Oboro asked again.

Drawing out Nen power... It inevitably made him think of one extremely rare kind of Nen user.

Exorcists.

Exorcism... to a certain extent, could be considered a bug.

Oboro had not expected there to be an Exorcist among the enemy ranks... If he could save him and make him work for him, he might prove quite useful in the future. No matter what kind of Hunter he became later, he could not fight alone forever... He would have to form his own team, and in Oboro's plans, there was a place for an Exorcist.

Exorcists were hard to come by.

Like a dying man suddenly returning to life, the man's eyes abruptly cleared, and he grinned at Oboro.

Then, the faint life still remaining in his body suddenly vanished like a kite with its string cut...

He had voluntarily dispersed his aura...

"..."

Oboro frowned at the sight.

His heart remained completely unmoved as he turned and walked away.

Although he was injured and had little Nen power left, cleaning up the survivors in this estate would not be a problem.

A few days later, the four Nen users under Brown who commanded the armed forces returned to the estate.

They had been dealing with the turmoil among the seven major families infiltrated by the Fills Family, purging the disruptive elements and leaving troops behind to garrison and enforce control.

The four of them had only managed to squeeze out time from their busy schedules to return for some rest and adjustment.

Still, they found it somewhat strange.

For the past few days, their companions had not contacted them, nor had they relayed any further orders or plans from their boss.

"Those bastards get to hide out here in peace and quiet. Damn it!"

At noon, the vehicle stopped at the entrance to the estate. One of the men pushed open the door and got out, grumbling unhappily, "We're the ones getting worked to the bone, and we still have to..."

But before he could finish, his expression instantly tightened.

Because he smelled blood and rot.

The other three got out behind him without reacting immediately and continued agreeing with him. "Quit complaining. The sooner we finish, the sooner we're done. Once things settle down, we can ask the boss to give us a long vacation... Anderson and the others have nearly wiped out the Fills Family... Their headquarters building was destroyed too. They moved faster than we did! Now all that's left are some small and mid-sized gang forces below... It probably won't be long before the boss..."

Likewise, they stopped halfway through.

The three men's faces changed drastically.

"Hey, hey, hey... What happened?!"

"Did someone attack the estate? The Fills Family? Impossible... If they had gathered a large force, we would have heard something... Besides, their people have been fighting Anderson's side the whole time. If they had shifted manpower, that side would have ended long ago... There's no way they could have held out this long!"

They saw the rotting corpses in the distance, surrounded by swarms of flies and giving off a foul stench. They were the guards.

Their hearts immediately sank.

"What are you panicking for... Green and the others are here... They probably just couldn't be bothered cleaning up. Lazy bastards!" One Nen user came back to his senses and rubbed his hair with a helpless look. "Looks like something really did happen while we were gone... Quite a few people died. Let's go inside and take a look."

With that, he was the first to head for the gates.

The other three followed.

"Judging from the traces left behind, it doesn't look like a large force gathered here or a team battle broke out... Were there only a few enemies? Or... just one?" The four continued deeper into the estate. Corpses no one had cleaned up lay everywhere. Some had been patrolmen, while others had been checkpoint guards. "They were almost all killed instantly... The murderer is strong!"

The experienced four saw the problem at a glance.

As they saw more and more corpses, all with bizarre manners of death, their expressions ceased to be relaxed.

"Anderson and the others still haven't found Fills Lily, that butler... or Oboro, their leader!"

"You think... Oboro did all this?"

"By himself?"

"What kind of joke is that! He can't be that stupid, can he... If he relied on the Fills Family remnants and the gang situation that still hasn't been stabilized, he might be able to create a sliver of hope amid the chaos. He might even escape... But if he came here alone, wouldn't that be suicide? How arrogant would he have to be to think that he alone could..."

After discussing it briefly, one of them curled his lips and spoke mockingly.

But before he could finish, another companion with a grave expression interrupted him. He took out his phone and dialed a number.

Green's number.

Beep... beep... beep...

The phone continued ringing unanswered.

They quickened their pace and finally passed through the tall archway.

Before them lay a plaza in the depths of the estate.

A scene entered the four men's view.

It made them... feel as though they had fallen into an ice cellar.

Under the clear daylight, a man sat on the stone platform beside the fountain, smiling at them.

And on the ground before the fountain, eighteen corpses had been arranged in neat rows.

They had all rotted away...

But the four men knew... those... were their companions...

The Nen user still holding his phone to his ear swallowed hard, terror filling his eyes.

He saw... that the man beside the fountain was holding a phone as well, and it was ringing nonstop.

That seemed to be... Green's phone.

The man waved the phone at him, then... answered it from dozens of meters away.

"Welcome... home."

Listening to the man's warm voice from the other end of the call...

The Nen user's phone slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground.

"Run!!!"

He screamed with all his might.

The weather was clearly warm and sunny that day... Yet at that moment, they felt as though they had been thrown into the bitter depths of winter!

Shortly afterward, in less than ten minutes.

Oboro, splattered with blood, dragged several fresh corpses over to the fountain and arranged them according to their positions and order.

"Then... let's wait for the next batch of guests..."

Elsewhere, the meeting between the Ten Dons and their partners had finally ended.

Brown immediately boarded an airship back to the Republic of Padokea.

The premonition in his heart was growing worse and worse...

The Nen users he had raised had all lost contact! The only good news was that the gang forces within the country had been brought under control... The Fills Family had been purged, though they had not yet captured the woman, the butler, or, most importantly, Oboro! His armed forces had suffered considerable losses as well. With Green and the others unheard from and no one left to lead them, the follow-up arrangements could not proceed.

He had to return at once and take charge.

Inside Brown's private airship.

His smoking habit had worsened lately. He no longer smoked cigars, switching to cigarettes instead. A cigarette was almost never absent from his hand, one after another.

He had also gained much more white hair... Unable to sleep through the night.

Standing before the window and looking at the view outside the cabin, he said in a low voice, "They should... all be dead, right..."

Behind him, Sato and two other Nen users said nothing.

"Was it him? How did he do it..."

Brown felt his temples throbbing and his head aching.

There were too many things he could not understand.

"I'll find him and kill him."

Sato suddenly said coldly.

Brown turned to look at him. After pondering for a moment, he said, "I'll leave it to you. I believe in you!"

The three people before him were the strongest trump cards under his command.

Especially Sato, who had never failed.