His head throbbed as consciousness slowly returned, and the darkness scattered like a startled swarm of aphids.
"Mm..." Gelman rubbed his forehead and tried to sit up.
A hand reached over from the side and steadied his arm. Startled, he turned to look and saw that it was Shizuku. Only then did his tense muscles relax.
"You're awake." Shizuku helped Gelman sit up.
Gelman gazed at the faint light on the horizon. It took him a while to confirm that it was dawn, not sunset.
He was full of questions. "Shizuku, what happened after that? I don't remember anything."
"You were grabbed by an enormous invisible hand, squeezed into a mass of dark-red aura, and vanished." Shizuku let go of Gelman's arm and described it as concisely as she could.
"And then?" Gelman pressed.
"Then?" Shizuku tilted her head and thought for a moment. "After that, Wing was grabbed out of the air just like you, and vanished the same way. Then it was my turn."
"I woke up about ten minutes ago. I used Nen Radar to look around nearby, and saw you lying on the ground. So I came over and nudged you awake."
Gelman looked around, frowning.
The surroundings were completely unfamiliar. This wasn't beneath the World Tree, beside the volcanic belt, or in the forest at the bottom of Spider Valley. They were on a hillside.
Gelman scanned the area and spotted vague outlines in the distance. The weak sunlight hadn't reached them yet, and everything remained shrouded in darkness.
In that case, the four of them had probably been seized one after another by that dark giant, which had somehow brought them here.
The dark-red aura they had been squeezed into might have been some kind of teleportation ability, similar to Gelman's Teleport Lantern or