"Ging, let me make sure I've got this straight."
Milluki lay in the middle of the surfboard, his jacket over his face, with only his seawater-pruned hands showing.
"You brought me out to sea to get back at my family for hunting you before, right?"
No one answered.
The waves rocked the board. Milluki's back pressed against the conjured material, and seawater slapped him every few seconds. His clothes were soaked through, the sun beat down from overhead, and his neck and the backs of his hands ached.
He pulled the jacket off his face.
"Answer me!"
Ging sat at the back of the surfboard with one leg dangling in the sea, his hair blown into a mess. He held Milluki's receiver, its screen crowded with dozens of signal points.
"Number three drifted more than four hundred meters east."
"The current carried it."
"Number eleven sank two meters."
"There's an undertow below it."
"Number twenty-six stopped transmitting."
Milluki sat up, pulled a spare terminal from his waist pouch, and tapped it a few times.
"Battery's dead. A waterproof battery can only be so big. The fact it lasted this long is more than you deserve."
Ging handed the receiver back.
"What a piece of junk."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Milluki pointed at the sea around them.
"I only brought thirty-seven probes, and I've dropped thirty-six of them. The ruins are surrounded by two rings of them. We're monitoring depth, temperature, and Nen reactions. What else do you want me to drop in, myself?"
Gela Jiang, standing at the front of the surfboard, glanced back.
"Worth a try. You're heavy enough to reach deeper water."
"Get lost!"
Gela Jiang laughed and pressed his foot against the board. It sliced diagonally across a wave, sending a sheet of seawater