Pampas

"Tick—tock—tick—tock."

Dark red blood dripped onto the ground.

It was a nosebleed.

"Again." Su Wu drooped his eyelids listlessly and casually wiped it away with his sleeve.

He was being hunted, getting nosebleeds, and using skills all at once.

His Mana Bar hadn't been full even once along the way. Whenever it recovered a little, he immediately spent it.

Especially on that last Cang.

So now, once again, he was completely drained.

That was why he wasn't in a hurry to go to the Church. He slowly lifted a foot, planning to stroll over at his leisure.

He could wait for his mana to recover along the way.

By the time he finally made it to the Church at a tortoise's pace, he saw several battered figures coming out.

They were the same people his Cang had just blasted away.

Though they were covered in wounds and their clothes were in tatters, all their limbs seemed intact. A dense layer of energy clung tightly to the surface of their bodies, like a cocoon.

So they really were Enhancement-types. Their bodies were remarkably tough; they'd survived even that.

It seemed his Cursed Energy was still too limited, and he was still too weak.

When the group saw Su Wu, they glared at him viciously. But they didn't dare cause trouble so close to the Church, so they helped each other away, fuming.

Su Wu ignored their indignation and walked straight into the Church. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he sat down in a nearby seat.

He casually picked up the fruit and snacks on the table and began eating.

Such things were rare in the Lower District, but commonplace in the Upper District.

Sugar. He needed sugar. More sugar.

If he didn't get some sugar soon, he didn't think he'd have the energy to negotiate with anyone.

The consequences of severe hypoglycemia... could be pretty serious.

Even as he sat inside the Church, his Six Eyes continued diligently gathering information. It was as if they would keep working as long as their owner was alive.

An unstoppable passive skill.

What a pain.

There was no sign of any godly statue in the Church, but quite a few people were inside. They weren't dressed alike, though most wore or had tattoos of inverted crosses.

And according to his Six Eyes, every member of the Church had a Nen ability.

Every one of them also had a gun, and some had more than one.

It was clear that Meteor City wasn't short on weapons.

If he remembered correctly, he'd once seen someone online analyze how Meteor City traded with outside crime syndicates in secret. It seemed the analysis had been right.

"What did you want to talk to me about?"

After eating all the candy on the table, Su Wu felt much better and was finally in the mood to speak.

"You were probably set up and abandoned in Meteor City, weren't you?" The only man dressed like a priest sat down beside him, answering with a question of his own.

"Hmm?" Su Wu neither confirmed nor denied it, merely responding with a breathy sound.

What had made the man reach that conclusion?

"You were injured, then dumped in Meteor City by an airship carrying garbage. Along with the garbage."

"Looking at you, was it a power struggle within your family? Or... is Meteor City your proving ground?" The man continued his analysis in an even tone, unobtrusively observing the newly emerged ability user.

The boy looked surprisingly young, but had a forceful, arrogant personality. His strength, at least, was about what the man had expected.

And he was... exceptionally good-looking.

His cool, pure features and the strange, sinister black tattoos belonged to the same person.

He had a peculiar charm, somewhere between divine and demonic.

Especially those eyes, like Sky Jewels...

In the man's view, they were as beautiful as the Kurta Clan's Scarlet Eyes, one of the Seven Great Beauties.

An unusual appearance often pointed to an unusual background.

This boy probably came from somewhere important.

Some special families sent their children to all sorts of places to test them.

Meteor City was one of those proving grounds.

But to those families, Meteor City's conditions were only fit to serve as a child's training ground.

Take the famous Assassin Family, the Zoldycks, for example.

That family had a habit of sending their children to Meteor City to improve their abilities.

So the best way to deal with outsiders like this was to ignore them.

"Did I give you permission to ask me questions?" The white-haired, blue-eyed boy raised the corner of his mouth arrogantly. His tone gave no hint of whether he was pleased or displeased, and the black markings on his body seemed to rise and fall with his breath, as if they were alive.

So he really did have a bad temper.

"I'm only asking and answering my own questions," the man replied, unbothered. He seemed to have dealt with plenty of difficult people before.

After all, he was a resident of Meteor City. He'd met plenty of people with worse tempers than the boy across from him, not to mention some with all sorts of bizarre quirks...

"Meteor City doesn't care what your purpose is, but this place is our shared home. Even if you're an outsider, I hope you'll remember that."

"As compensation for breaking the gates between the districts, the other buildings, and the Church's entrance..." The man looked the boy over but didn't see anything valuable.

Or rather... the most valuable things were the boy himself.

His strength, his body, and his eyes.

"You've been marked by the Vulture Gang's Nen ability..." His gaze fell on the boy's hand.

"As long as you have that mark, the Vultures can track your location and find you."

"The Church can remove it for you. In return, as both payment and compensation, you'll have to stay in Meteor City for a year and do some work for the Church during that time," the blond man said with a smile.

"Fine. When I leave Meteor City in a year, you'll provide me with identification." Su Wu leaned back against the chair, his head tilted back as he spoke without looking at the man opposite him.

He needed the Inverted Pentagram Mark removed. He didn't want to put up with something like that on his body for even one extra day.

And when he left Meteor City, he'd need legitimate identification. He also needed time to quietly build up his strength.

All things considered, staying in Meteor City was a decent option.

After all, the Hunter world was dangerous.

His Six Eyes had clearly displayed the precise amount of Nen each person in the Church possessed. Analyzing all that information also made him feel blood trickling from his nose.

He absolutely couldn't let anyone see him bleed. It would ruin his presence.

Even though his Six Eyes showed that most people in the Church were quite strong, with several times more Nen than he had Cursed Energy.

That meant they had more stamina and greater vitality than he did.

But that didn't mean Su Wu was afraid of them. He was just so excited that he could barely stop himself from trembling.

"Deal." The man ignored the boy's disdainful, nose-in-the-air attitude and agreed casually.

"Let me introduce myself. I'm a member of the Elder Council, responsible for managing District 12—"

"Pampas." It seemed only then that he remembered to introduce himself.

"As for me, just call me Hill. Hill Sil Devil." The white-haired, blue-eyed boy still had his head tilted back. His voice was somewhat muffled as he openly came up with a perfunctory false name to give everyone.

Hill came from the French word ciel, meaning sky. A foreign teacher had given him the name in kindergarten.

Together with the "mist" in his real name, it might make people think of a sky shrouded in thin mist.

Of course, the teacher had given the whole class English names.

He'd made up Sil Devil himself.

"Hope you enjoy your stay in Meteor City, Hill," Pampas said.

"Members of the Church have their own homes. Someone will show you yours shortly. We also provide clothes for free. By the way, I hope you can start work tomorrow." His words seemed full of goodwill, but a closer look revealed the unmistakable tone of someone trying to squeeze as much out of him as possible.

"Are you that short on people?" Su Wu stood up, looking rather uninterested.

There was no way anyone could enjoy working for someone else.

"I just hope you'll show us what you're worth as soon as possible," Pampas said with a smile.

He looked like a real piece of work.

Su Wu said nothing more. One of the Church members led him to an empty house in District 3.

"Even the strongest ability users can only live in District 3. District 1 is where all the Elder Council members live, though each of them manages a different district. District 2 belongs to Meteor City's families."

"Your exact address depends on where you're assigned to work. Of course, once you join the Church, you can freely enter any of the twelve districts except District 1. Any unoccupied house is ownerless, so you can move in wherever you like."

Meteor City had existed for around a thousand years, so it wasn't surprising that it had families of its own.

Su Wu said nothing. He took the supplies the Church had provided and went into the place where he'd be staying that night.

The house was mostly empty. It looked fairly polished from the outside, but inside it had only some basic furniture, leaving it a little bare. Still, it had everything he needed, and there was food in the cupboards.

The faucet worked, too. That was enough.

Su Wu wasn't picky about his surroundings. That much had been clear from how he hadn't minded sitting on a pile of garbage in the first place.

So he quickly ran some water, took a shower, and changed into clean clothes. Once he'd made sure he was free of blood, dust, and strange odors, he lay down on the bed.

Everything he'd gone through in a single day had been a bit much.

But according to his old habits, every night he reviewed what had happened during the day.

"I can currently use Dismantle and Cang to attack. Cang can also carry me at high speed, but these attacks consume a lot of mana. With what I have now, I can't use them many times. And..."

"Although my Six Eyes can track Nen, and my physical abilities are decent, I'm still not strong enough, and my reactions are too slow. If my Mana Bar runs dry and someone gets close, I won't have any way to fight back."

"I need to find a way to increase my mana, improve my reaction speed, and learn some close-combat skills..." He lay on the bed with his eyes closed, reflecting on what he could've done better. In the end, he summed up the areas he still needed to improve.

Nosebleed War God. All right, all right. (?)