Hisoka, Archbishop X, and a Physique Over a Thousand

Roy's low spirits rippled slightly like waves on water.

He walked slowly toward Maha, his feet treading on the mottled stone slabs, the Moonlight overhead, and the soft lights illuminating the sides of the Ancient Castle. As he drew nearer, he slightly lowered his body so that Maha could reach his forehead without having to stand on tiptoe.

"Murder?" The old man gently stroked the Sun-Earring Boy's forehead. The child was growing too fast; in a few years, he probably wouldn't even be able to reach him even on tiptoe...

"Hmm." The "Life Energy" lying on the panel was cold and glaring.

Roy took a deep breath, then looked up and met Maha's meaningful, dim yellow eyes.

"This isn't your first time killing someone, so why aren't you happy?"

The Zoldyck are famous all over the world and are known as the "world's number one assassin family" because of their ability to "kill".

You could say that a "Zoldyck" should treat Mike Mike... as if "killing" were as commonplace as "drinking water" or "eating," so...

"Unhappy" means "incompetent," not a qualified Zoldyck...

Roy didn't answer. He straightened up, looked out the window, the sunset faded, the moon rose in the east, and night fell, as darkness enveloped the heads of "Little Matty," "Old Mark," "Lady Nora," and other "Abandoned People." He said softly, "I'm sorry, Great-Grandpa, Father was right. I probably... wouldn't be a qualified assassin."

"Whoosh~" A Youyou breeze stirred, carrying a fallen leaf, which the Sun-Earring Boy caught and rubbed lightly in the moonlight... He examined the leaf's veins and murmured, "I can't be as cold-blooded as my father and grandfather."

As soon as he loosened his grip, he let the fallen leaves drift away, drifting towards the Kukuroo Mountain where the Zoldyck Family were stationed like a giant black dragon...

"That's because you haven't killed enough people."

"Not enough darkness has been experienced,"

"You'll get used to it after a while, just like I did back then... you'll gradually get used to it."

Maha stood with his hands behind his back beside the Sun-Earring Boy, looking out at the deep night, and remained silent.

As the old man said, "I was being pretentious." Roy paused for a moment, then regained focus in his eyes and respectfully bowed to Maha.

The old man waved his hand. "Wrong... that's not being pretentious, it's... kindness."

Maha tilted his head and looked at the Sun-Earring Boy with satisfaction, saying, "So, your father and grandfather were both good-for-nothings... They were only kind to their own family, not to others... They would never be able to walk the path of [Faith]."

"Great-grandfather doesn't need to comfort me."

"You're wrong again... I'm not trying to comfort you, I'm just telling you the truth." Maha extended a finger and lightly tapped Roy's chest. "Those two, including your two younger brothers, only have this family in their hearts. Illumi even only recognizes you, and you,"

"It contains... the world, and it must contain... the entire world!"

Thousands of tombs stand silently, stretching endlessly...

Roy paused slightly, looking down at the thin, withered old man, Maha. A scene he'd witnessed in Maha's Unconscious Realm automatically flashed through his mind...

Those men, women, young and old who had followed their great-grandfather in resisting theocracy and were buried alive with the entire nation gradually overlapped with "Little Matty," "Old Mark," and "Lady Nora," forming the "silent majority" of the Dark Continent, a silence so profound it was deafening!

They are dead, but they will not disappear. There will always be successors who will take up their shoulders and inherit their dreams... and I will be one of those successors.

With his mind clear and his thoughts flowing freely, Roy exhaled softly and smiled at Maha, saying, "That's why I'm the sun... I was born to shine on the whole world."

"Hehehe... get lost." Maha laughed, revealing a mouth with very few teeth.

The old man pretended to kick...

Roy dodged his leap, and then...

The Sun-Earring Boy, with his long, black hair cascading over his shoulders, turned and walked away. His departing figure was no longer desolate; instead, it exuded a sense of freedom and acceptance.

"Tap... tap..." Footsteps sounded, the Sun-Earring Boy rounded the corner and disappeared in an instant, replaced by...

Her long, silver hair, cascading down to her waist, shimmered in the Moonlight...

"Grandpa," Silva, dressed in a smart outfit and black cloth shoes, appeared beside Maha, standing where Roy had just stood, after Roy left. (Note: Silva is Maha's great-grandson; for convenience, he is simply called Grandpa.)

The man watched the Sun-Earring Boy walk away, and said solemnly, "I never imagined... it would be Roy."

The path of Faith —what exactly that path is, Silva doesn't know... but the man knows that no one who aspires to walk this path is weak; in other words... Roy has inherited Maha's unfulfilled "dream."

Maha remained silent, Silva continued, "Grandpa always said that only incompetent people become heads of families. I was one, Father was one, and you were one back then..."

At first, I didn't understand, and I was unconvinced.

"Now I understand,"

"Roy... he's really magnanimous."

"So... he's different," Maha said quietly.

"Yes, he's different," Silva repeated, taking his hands out of his pockets and crossing them over his chest, his eyes gleaming. "I look forward to his growth."

"A year?"

"One year!"

"Perhaps it won't take that long." Maha patted Silva's arm, turned around, and walked back into the house.

Silva:

He frowned and emphasized, "A year isn't a long time."

"I think it'll take too long." Maha slammed the door shut. "If you don't believe me, just wait and see."

Silva's silver hair swayed in the wind as he chuckled, his voice low and suppressed. "Heh heh heh... just wait and see."

He turned around and left with his back to him.

In the mottled stone corridors of the Ancient Castle, fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons, each closed their own doors.

Maha lay back in the rocking chair and continued listening to his cartoons. Silva didn't go back to the bedroom to look after Kikyo. Alone, he rushed into the training room under the cover of night.

"Bang! Bang! Bang..." The sound of sandbags being repeatedly smashed echoed incessantly.

The passing butler was so frightened that he dared not look up while walking, except for... the Gotoh.

"Gurgle..." The young butler pushed the food cart, glanced at the training room in the distance, then turned and went to Roy's bedroom. As usual, he laid out a sumptuous dinner on Roy's table, including... the special medicine for Consumption that he had just picked up from the hospital that day. "According to Dr. Logan's treatment plan, Isoniazid + Rifampicin + Pyrazinamide + Ethambutol combined for 2 months has shown good results. Continue Isoniazid + Rifampicin treatment for 4 months, and it should basically... cure him..."

Consumption is not a problem in modern medicine, but in the world of Demon Slayer, during the Taisho era, it was practically a terminal illness. Roy took a bite of pizza, accepted the medicine handed to him by Gotoh, and carefully read the instructions... Tanjuro's kind and gentle face, always cuddling a heater and looking at him with a loving gaze, automatically appeared in his mind. Finally... the moment had come to fulfill his promise to him.

Three days, probably another three days..." It will take three more days to roughly understand the therapeutic principle of the drug, and then, using the " Anti-Conjuration " method, try to bring it into the Demon Slayer world... Roy silently calculated in his mind, slurping down the pizza in his mouth with a spoonful of cream of mushroom soup, and smilingly said to Gotoh, "Well done."

"It's all what I should do." Gotoh pushed up her glasses and tentatively asked, "Young Master, that blond guy sent a photo, saying he wants you to see his son. Would you like to see it?"

Gon... I've never seen what he looked like as a baby... "Give it to me."

"Yes."

Gotoh took out his phone, opened the screen, and a photo appeared... In the photo, a family of three, especially Jin, was holding a chubby baby and grinning foolishly, which was completely different from his usual image as a wise, adventurous, and appreciative two-star Ruins Hunter... Clearly, he was another father who had been blinded by the joy of having a son...

Roy's gaze swept past the father and son, then fell on the woman, who was also Kim's wife... She met his gaze through the screen, her eyes cold and indifferent, seemingly unconcerned about anything, which instantly made him furrow his brow... His first thought was of Andrew Cooper, whom he had just killed!

This woman... is extraordinary...

"It seems her name is... Vivian..."

Roy silently memorized the woman's appearance, saying, "Send him a message congratulating him on the birth of his son. As for... forget about the congratulatory money; they don't do that on Whale Island."

Not just on Whale Island, but across the entire continent, it seems there's no such thing as "lucky money"... Gotoh Tong's thick beard twitched, and he nodded, saying, "Yes."

He then pulled another intelligence report from his pocket and handed it over...

"Holl called to say that the [Evil Cult] organization has been spreading like wildfire lately, spanning several continents and appearing in many countries. They've even reportedly been spotted in Kakin, just across the sea..."

[Mental Morphine] Guzman...

Roy took the intelligence from Gotoh and immediately noticed the [given name] – [Real]!

He frowned, and the first thing that came to mind was the [Substitute Death Doll].

What is truth? Believe and it is true; disbelief and it is false... Believe in truth... Revere the [True Creator]... Discover your inner true self... My friends, partners, loved ones, family... Each of you will discover a different version of yourself... a different world through [truth]...

The original Doctrine were laid bare in the open.

Roy read through the list item by item... Finally, several important Believer of the [Church of Truth], namely the [Archbishop of Truth], were listed, including several of Roy's old acquaintances...

[Mental Morphine] Guzman... the two men and one woman who once appeared outside Guzman's villa on Meteor City West District Street, Otsuka Yu, Mark Wayne... and--

I once met him briefly in Ganslan, the "performance capital"... Hisoka Moro!

"How did he become... an archbishop?"

A sense of absurdity permeated the air... Roy was taken aback when he saw the "Jester" photo posted on the intelligence report...

The Sun-Earring Boy, with his red hair pulled back, his face painted with stars and tears, and his eyes slanted upwards like hooks, looked rather... comical, given that he was wearing a red hooded robe!

"Young Master should have killed him back then," Gotoh recognized Hisoka at a glance. He was the Jester who had followed the Young Master in Ganslan, only to have his head grabbed and shoved into the wall by the Young Master...

"Ignore him, he's fake..."

"What do you mean, fake?"

"False Believer..."

"False Believer who worship [truth]..." Gotoh found it absurd, yet... this was precisely the true core that [Texture Surprise] could reflect.

After reading the intelligence, Roy casually pulled out a tissue, wiped his mouth slowly, and said, "Who can distinguish between truth and falsehood? Gotoh, you only need to remember, 'In the face of absolute strength,'"

"Truth can be false, and falsehood can be truth."

Calling a deer a horse is nothing more than this.

"Yes." Gotoh nodded solemnly. After serving Roy his dinner, she said goodnight, Young Master, cleared away the dishes, and pushed the food cart downstairs.

Roy sat by the dining table, watching him leave. A thought struck him, and he opened his Believer Panel, glancing at the [Notification: Your Believer's strength has increased, Power of Faith +7...]

[Believer: Gotoh (Note: Overflowing with loyalty)]

[Constitution: 224→280]

[Manifested Aura: C-(420/100000)→C-(3420/100000)]

[Potential Aura: C-(2812/100000)→C(812/100000)]

[Rating: C-]

[Note: Referring to Chimera Ant, your Believer "Gotoh" has already acquired the qualifications to become a general Chimera Ant Squadron Leader.]

It seems... he's been working incredibly hard lately, without the slightest slackening...

"Young Master, next time, I will definitely not lose again..." The butler's vow after his battle with Razor still echoed in his ears... Roy remained silent, then casually opened the panels of the nine pillars— Rengoku Kyojuro Himejima Gyomei, Rengoku Kyojuro, Obanai Iguro, Giyu Tomioka, and the Ubuyashiki Kagaya— to look at them... The strongest was C-rank, and even the worst Ubuyashiki Kagaya, was D-rank. Their rapid progress after awakening their powers had unknowingly added a great deal of [Power of Faith] to Roy's abilities.

[Hint: Power of Faith +3 +5 +8 +9 +5 +4...]

[Demon Slayer Total: 47 points]

Roy's mind raced, and he continued to Hokage character panel... A group of Uchiha, including Uchiha Setsuna Uchiha Yashiro Uchiha, who had awakened their Sharingan after he infused them with "Negative Emotions," appeared before him.

Panel prompts...

[Power of Faith +7 +8 +10 +11...]

It was even higher than what the Nine Pillars Himejima Gyomei, had provided... Roy knew this was due to the power of [Bloodline Bond]...

The deeper the bond, the more Power of Faith it can provide. Therefore, one can imagine... how high this number will rise when Itachi Sasuke awaken their Sharingan...

Lost in thought, Roy pulled out a chair and stood up. Before heading to the Ninja War battlefield, he turned and disappeared into the bathroom to begin another round of skill point allocation...

"Splash splash splash..."

The shower is turned on, and water flows down.

Stripped of his clothes, the Sun-Earring Boy stood barefoot under the showerhead, bracing himself against the wall with his hands, and took a deep breath, saying, "Come on."

Suddenly, a notification sound rang out...

[Note: "Power of Faith" has been depleted...]

[Life Energy depleted...]

["Physical Fitness": 946.5 → 1246.5 (Note: Average person is 1)]

Breaking 1000 for the first time!