The Hunt Ends

The seven-day Hunter Exam hunting trial had come to a complete close.

For seven days, Glasses Island had been a battlefield, with candidates hunting one another and snatching number tags.

Leorio had recklessly lost his number tag early on and nearly been eliminated. Kurapika had stepped in to negotiate and get it back for him. After that, Leorio stuck with Kurapika instead of charging ahead rashly, safely earned enough points, and the two of them qualified.

By the sixth day, every candidate had gradually gathered enough points to pass, and the overall outcome of the trial had been decided. Yet deep within an unknown rocky plateau in the west of the island, Netero and Saitama had quietly clashed. The 100-Type Guanyin had shaken heaven and earth, blasting the entire plateau into a massive sunken crater and leaving palm prints across the walls and shattered reefs behind—a secret ruin no one dared investigate.

On the seventh day, mist blanketed the mountains and forests as the Glasses Island hunting trial officially came to an end.

Gon sat beneath a cedar tree near the boarding point, two number tags resting on his knees. Kurapika sat beside him, while Leorio leaned against the trunk and dozed.

Hanzo dropped down from the canopy, casually tossed a one-point number tag from an irrelevant candidate at his feet, then darted into the depths of the forest.

Before dawn, Bodoro crawled out of a cave and staggered toward the boarding point, repeatedly muttering that he would never take the Hunter Exam again for the rest of his life.

Killua was the last to emerge. He sat down beside Gon.

The airship hatch opened, and the candidates boarded one after another. Hisoka leaned beneath the farthest cedar tree, spinning a playing card around and around in his hand. In the shade of a nearby tree, Illumi stood expressionlessly, his face filled with Nen Needles and his movements as stiff and mechanical as ever.

Saitama had not appeared on the island again after the first day. When the assembly whistle sounded, Hisoka was the last to step onto the gangway, finding a seat by the window.

The airship took off. Masta's voice came over the broadcast. "We will make a temporary stop midway to pick up Chairman Netero and his entourage."

Hisoka looked toward the west side of the island through the porthole. On the horizon was a tiny black speck, floating alone amid the shimmering waves.

Images flashed through his mind.

Hisoka passed through the edge of the forest. The sea breeze was still salty, carrying the distinctive scent of rotting leaves from Glasses Island.

The deeper he went, the drier the wind became. The saltiness was replaced by a more pungent odor—the mineral scent of rocks scorched by extreme heat and then cooled, like the dry, spicy tang lingering in the air after flint had been struck again and again.

Trees began to topple. At first, they had only leaned. Then they had snapped in half. The breaks had not been split apart; they had been crushed by blunt force. The fibers within the trunks had been compressed into dense threads, as though an invisible giant palm had pressed down from above and pulverized them.

Farther ahead, cracks appeared in the ground. They went from fine fissures to trenches wide enough to fit a finger, then to chasms large enough to swallow an entire foot. Rubble radiated outward in the same direction, as if someone had detonated something more terrifying than a bomb at the center of the rocky plateau.

He reached the edge of the plateau.

And abruptly stopped.

A playing card slipped from between his fingers and fell straight onto the rock dust. His golden pupils shrank to pinpoints, and all color drained from his face painted with stars and teardrops.

His heart violently clenched in his chest, as if gripped by an invisible hand. He heard his own heartbeat—thump, thump, thump—each beat heavier than the last, so heavy it nearly shattered his ribs. His chest hurt from the suffocating pressure, and he even forgot how to breathe.

The entire rocky plateau had been beaten into an enormous sunken crater, its opening wide enough to swallow a whole airship.

The crater walls were so smooth they barely seemed like stone, every inch embedded with palm prints. The individual palm prints were the deepest, their outlines the clearest.

Paired palm prints were symmetrical on both sides, twice as deep. The densest, most chaotic palm prints overlapped layer upon layer, some stamped repeatedly in the exact same place, as though the same palm had ground down over and over again.

At the very center of the crater floor stood a stone pillar. The entire plateau had been blasted several meters downward, but that pillar had not budged. At its top were two blurred footprints, shoulder-width apart, their depressions smoother at the bottom than the surrounding stone.

Reefs split apart by Zero Hand lay directly in front of those footprints. The reefs had been cleaved in half lengthwise, their cut surfaces smooth as mirrors and coated in a thin layer of glassy crystals. There were no explosive fractures or shattered edges, only a layer of glass formed when molten stone had cooled.

Bloodthirsty Butterfly corpses were embedded in the crevices of the reefs. They had not been stunned to death when Zero Hand was unleashed. Earlier, palm-force gusts had swept them from the sky in waves, and before they could fly again, the next wave had pressed them back against the rock walls. There were more of them than anywhere else on the island, like a thin layer of dark red fallen leaves carpeting the depressions between palm prints.

He stood at the edge of the crater for a long time. It was not that he did not want to leave. His legs had simply forgotten how to move. His fingertips still trembled, not from fear, and even less from excitement.

He touched the edge of the nearest palm print with his fingertips. The stone was cold, with no trace of Nen left behind. Then he withdrew his hand, bent down to pick up the fallen playing card, and turned back. He told no one where he had been.

When he returned, Hanzo caught sight of a broken Bloodthirsty Butterfly wing on his shoulder near the boarding point. Hisoka offered no explanation and did not remove it, letting the fragment remain there as a mark of that battle beyond everything he understood.

The airship slowly descended midway through the journey to pick up Netero and his group.

The hatch opened. Saitama walked in carrying half a bowl of sesame sauce, followed by Beans, who held a record board with only a few pages left. Netero came last—his yukata draped over his shoulders again, his pace much slower than usual. He was not stroking his beard with a wicked grin. He merely found a seat by the window, folded his hands over his knees, and closed his eyes.

Saitama sat by the porthole, dipped the last slice of wagyu into the sesame sauce, and put it into his mouth. After chewing twice, he looked down at the bottom of the bowl and rested his chopsticks across it.

Hisoka's gaze shifted from Netero to Saitama. One man's breathing was so shallow it was nearly inaudible, the veins on the back of his hand more pronounced than usual. The other man's T-shirt was undamaged, his collar still neatly pulled up, without a single wound on his bald head.

He licked his lips. The movement was slow—so slow that his tongue moved from the left corner of his mouth to the right, and when it returned to the corner, the tip had not withdrawn.

On the sixth day, at the rocky plateau, he had crouched on the crater wall and counted those palm prints layer by layer. From the first layer to the last, every strike had landed directly above those two footprints on the stone pillar. And now, the man who had unleashed more than a hundred palms sat before him by the porthole, so weakened that even his breathing had become shallow. Meanwhile, the man who had taken more than a hundred palms looked completely fine, staring down at an empty dipping bowl.

His throat bobbed slightly as he forced that low, hoarse muffled laugh in his chest back into his lungs. He had held it in for too long. Even his shoulders had begun to tremble uncontrollably, like a large feline teased for six entire days that had finally, in the last frame of the scene, seen a glint of light that had not yet fallen but would sooner or later bite into someone's throat.

He drew the creased card from the deepest part of his pocket and held it between two fingers. He did not lick it. He merely let it rest there before sliding it back into the deck arranged by layers, leaving only the corner marked with a star and teardrop exposed.

Outside the window, Glasses Island grew smaller and smaller.

Gon slept in his seat with his fishing rod clutched in his arms. Kurapika handed Leorio a compressed biscuit. Hanzo played with hard monkey-feed pellets from his ninja tool pouch. Killua leaned against the seat beside Gon, unconsciously rubbing the seam of his pants with his fingertips, a trace of imperceptible gravity hidden in his eyes.

Saitama set the dipping bowl on the empty seat beside the porthole and closed his eyes. His right hand rested loosely clenched on his thigh, his knuckles faintly flushed—a hundred palm strikes had left no injuries, but still brought a trace of refreshing sensation.

Hisoka watched that slightly curled fist, gathered the playing cards into his palm, and slowly closed all five fingers around them. He placed the reordered deck on his knee, closed his eyes, and neither licked a card nor muttered.

Outside the window, the sea had returned to calm. Hisoka still leaned against the cabin wall, his playing cards already put away. That Joker had not been placed in the deck he would use today. He spread the cards into a fan and slowly gathered them again, his movements slower and gentler than usual.

The airship was passing through sea mist. The first true ray of sunlight tore through the clouds in the east, turning the portholes gold. Gon's eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake. He merely hugged his fishing rod a little tighter.