The moment Brown stepped off the airship, he received news that his residence had been occupied.
By Oboro, the head of the Fills Family.
Every Nen user under his command had been killed. Not a single one had survived!
Even though he had anticipated it, Brown's heart still churned upon hearing the news, and he found it hard to remain calm.
The armed forces under his command were currently controlling the various families. Without his orders, they had not yet returned to the palace.
Brown immediately notified his men not to worry about the gangs for now... and to evacuate at once.
Right now, the most urgent matter was getting rid of Oboro!
After that, he and the three Satos returned to their base ahead of the others.
Less than half a day later, more than a dozen black sedans drove into the palace district, where vehicles were normally forbidden, and arrived at the plaza... Everywhere they looked, there were maggot-ridden corpses reeking horribly.
When the cars stopped, Brown stepped out with a face as dark as the bottom of a pot.
He looked toward the man sitting by the fountain, his filthy clothes crusted with grime...
The killing intent in his eyes was impossible to suppress.
Ever since he had secured his position among the Ten Dons, he had never suffered such a crushing setback!
If word got out, he would be utterly humiliated.
"I've been waiting for you for a long time. Why did you come back so late?"
Oboro leaned back with both hands braced against the stone platform, looking lazy, as if greeting an old friend.
There was no sense of urgency at all.
"Look what you've done!"
Brown forced out the words through clenched teeth.
Everyone saw the pile of "rotting flesh" laid out before Oboro...
"I'm not interested in you..."
Oboro curled his lips and shifted his gaze to the black-clad ninja. "Sato, your name is Sato, right? This isn't our first meeting. When I stayed here before, you kept watching me from the shadows... So? Do you understand me a little better now?"
Being ignored by Oboro, Brown clenched his fists.
"Why?"
He still held back his anger and spoke.
"There's no why... I just think I could sit in one of the Ten Dons' seats too... Maybe I'd even do better than you." Oboro bared a row of white teeth and said softly, "Besides... you already wanted to get rid of me. Isn't that just how gangs work? Do you really need a reason?"
"..."
"Ignorant."
Brown answered with two words.
Oboro smiled. Looking at Brown's face, he slowly rose and rubbed his hair. "Don't count on those armed troops of yours. They aren't coming..."
"!!!"
Brown's heart jolted.
"Don't you find it strange? Why did I know exactly when you left? Your deception... doesn't work on me. I even know how many people you brought with you..."
A thought was about to surface in Brown's mind.
"Who? Who was it?!"
Someone among the Ten Dons had betrayed him! According to the "rules," that should have been impossible!
Matters between the Ten Dons could only be handled internally! "There are two people. One did it for profit, while the other already had a grudge against you... Nothing is absolute. You aren't the only one with elite armed forces. Others have them too. Openly, she couldn't make a move, but when it came to dirty tricks... As someone from the underworld, she was quite experienced. Once you died, the contracts and rules between you could be weakened and abolished..." Oboro's words made Brown instantly understand that someone among the Ten Dons had sent subordinates into his territory.
Not to support him, but to help Oboro!
At its root... it came down to the nature of underground forces and human nature.
The Ten Dons were the finest examples of that.
"Looks like... you aren't very popular..." Oboro said.
"You filthy bitch!"
A woman's face appeared in Brown's mind. He was so furious that he cursed aloud, his eyes bloodshot.
Suddenly, Brown thought of something. He exhaled a foul breath and calmed down.
He took out a cigarette. A subordinate beside him lit it for him, and he took a hard drag. "Very good... You did very well! But... there's one crucial point you overlooked..."
"As long as you die... everything will be over. That dead woman wouldn't dare make a move against me personally... Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to remain among the Ten Dons either!"
After saying that, he gave Sato a look.
Sato understood and silently stepped forward.
He instructed another Nen user, "Protect the boss."
The latter nodded.
Seeing this, Oboro also walked toward Sato step by step, excitement appearing on his face. "Your aura... is different from the others. Very strong..."
"Thank you."
Sato approached Oboro as well.
Hearing that, he calmly replied with two words.
Oboro raised a hand and conjured the Face Button.
"Power on!"
The familiar cry, the familiar rhythm.
"Heh."
Seeing Oboro use his Nen ability right away, Sato suddenly let out a faint sneer.
"Hm?"
Oboro sensed that something was wrong. A feeling of danger rose from his heart.
Before he could react... a tiny bullet tore through the air and silently struck him!
It was only a single bullet, yet in that instant, Oboro felt as though he had been hit by a missile. Thick black smoke and flames erupted with a deafening blast, and the power was terrifying.
A kilometer away, a man stood atop the dome of a palace.
He was one of the three strongest Nen users under Brown's command!
He held a sniper rifle in his hands. A monocle hung over one eye, a high-tech electronic device that could both telescope and magnify.
"Whew!"
Seeing that the shot had hit its target, the man whistled and sighed. "Terrifying... He actually took out all those guys by himself..."
After speaking, another special "bullet" appeared in his hand, and he loaded it into the rifle.
His ability allowed him to compress the destructive power and effects of "ammunition" into a tiny bullet. The ammunition could be incendiary rounds, grenades, armor-piercing rounds, explosive rounds, and more. What he had just fired was a tank-fired missile.
Though the compressed missile's power dropped to some extent, it could still blow not just a person, but an entire house into pieces.
His Nen ability was extremely destructive. Its only weakness was that he could not fire repeatedly in a short time, and it consumed a great deal of Nen power.
"One more shot..."
The man adjusted his line of sight and angle, activating Gyo in his eye.
Then...
He discovered that there was no target in the smoke and flames.
"Where is he?"
He saw Sato charging toward him at astonishing speed, waving his hand through the air as though warning him of something.
The man's hair stood on end.
Oboro was closing in on his hiding place!
"He can still move after taking one of my shots?"
The sniper was slightly stunned, then smiled. "Catching me won't be that easy..."
His ability required long-range combat. He absolutely could not let an enemy discover him or get close.
That was why his skill at concealing his aura was extraordinary.
He would not be detected so easily...
The man used Zetsu, drawing in his aura and cutting himself off from the outside world... This was his greatest specialty! Then, carrying his rifle, he leaped down from the height and changed positions.
He would wait for Sato to find the target and hold him down before giving him a signal.
On the ground, Sato raced forward, madly pursuing the figure ahead.
He had seen clearly... Oboro had indeed been hit by the bullet, but it had only grazed him! This was the drawback of his companion's Nen ability. Because the ammunition had been compressed into a bullet, its size had shrunk. Though its speed had increased and it was more concealed, it would not explode immediately. There was a slight delay!
Oboro had only suffered the fierce impact after the ammunition exploded! Sato was deeply shaken... He knew his companion's marksmanship well. There was no way the shot could have missed! In other words, Oboro had made a minute adjustment to his body within milliseconds using inhuman reaction speed.
Creating an illusion.
It might have been a tiny movement invisible to the naked eye... but not just anyone could do it.
At least, if it had been Sato, he did not think he possessed such astonishing reaction speed...
Blood poured from nearly half of Oboro's body. He had only been injured by the initial force... The instant his flesh lost balance, he stabilized himself with his terrifying physical qualities and burst from the smoke in a flash.
He reduced the lingering force of the smoke and flames—the secondary damage—to the minimum! Following the direction the bullet had come from, he charged toward the hidden enemy! That was why Sato followed immediately.
He absolutely could not let Oboro find his companion!
"In that instant, he focused all his Nen on the part of his body facing the impact... He didn't simply use Ren to increase his aura output. Instead, he used Gyo to first assign his aura to one spot, then used Ten to cover it further and increase the density of his Nen. Finally, he used Zetsu to eliminate the excess aura from the rest of his body... achieving defense with one hundred percent of his Nen!"
Sato's mind raced, his gaze grave.
Doing so maximized Oboro's defense, but it also left the rest of his body completely unprotected due to the lack of Nen.
Extremely vulnerable.
It was a very risky move, but also the most effective.
Bold and meticulous!
Originally, Oboro had been maintaining Ken, which meant his Nen attack and defense were both at fifty percent.
A technique meant to cover the entire body.
But in the blink of an eye, Oboro had changed how he used Nen...
Such refined control and allocation of Nen... It was the first time Sato had ever seen that level.
Setting Nen abilities aside, those Nen techniques alone... made Sato feel a little terrified.
No wonder... this guy had killed Green and all the others...
Everything had happened in an instant... It was too fast!
They truly were not on the same level!
And then there was this... As a ninja trained from childhood, Sato had always been extremely confident in his speed... Yet although the distance between them was gradually closing, he could not stop Oboro immediately! This man's footwork was exceptionally superb! The two moved one after the other like two illusory bolts of lightning, racing across roads woven between palace buildings.
A moment later, Oboro leaped up, kicked off the walls of the buildings several times, and landed atop the palace roof where the sniper had been standing.
Looking down from above, he swept his gaze around. A few breaths later, his eyes locked onto a patch of shadow several hundred meters away. There... someone was there! Yet that person seemed not to realize he had already been exposed.
Still holding his rifle, he was quickly moving away...
"Watch out!"
Sato had just arrived beneath the palace when he looked up and saw Oboro already shooting through the air. He immediately shouted! The sniper's body jolted as if electrocuted, and he abruptly turned around.
He saw a streak darting left and right, weaving across the tops of the buildings, reaching him in an instant before dropping from above.
"How... is he so fast?!"
The sniper's face drained of color.
He had only just jumped down from the roof...
Oboro's speed in catching up was beyond imagination.
At first, Oboro had been unable to sense where the man was... because he was too far away.
But based on the bullet's trajectory and the sniper's range, he had narrowed it down to an area... He used his speed to exploit the time gap. As long as the target had not managed to widen the distance between them again, once they got close, Oboro believed he could find him.
Besides, the sniper definitely had not used Zetsu from the very beginning... He must have concealed his aura only after realizing Oboro was coming.
That meant... traces of his aura would remain...
Others might not have noticed it, but he could.
Most importantly, too little time had passed. The "trace" was still there.
Just as expected... he succeeded.
Whoosh! As Oboro twisted and landed, he clenched both hands into fists and smashed down.
He struck the Nen user. With a bang, the man collapsed on the spot, his flesh splitting apart as he died instantly! Oboro ignored the pursuing Sato, turned, and sprinted back the way he had come.
The battlefield should not be here...
Before you continue