Cage × Mercenary Squad

The auction venue had three floors, each six meters high.

On the first floor, at that moment...

In front of the stairs leading to the second floor...

Several security guards in black suits held pistols as they watched their surroundings warily. A man who looked like their captain anxiously tried to contact the outside world on his phone.

Just a few minutes earlier, they had discovered that the doors leading outside had inexplicably shut.

They had tried to open them, but the doors refused to budge, as though they had fused with the surrounding space.

Only a few smaller doors could still be opened.

He had tried shooting out the locks, only to discover that some mysterious force kept them completely unscathed, no matter what struck them.

The building had become a cage, trapping everyone inside.

Outside the auction venue, people were already trying to force their way through the doors.

Drobada stood with his arms folded across his chest, staring gravely at the doors before him.

"It's undoubtedly the effect of a Nen ability, but..."

He gathered Nen Aura around his eyes and activated [Gyo], only to witness an astonishing sight-

The entire building was wrapped in a thin layer of Nen Aura. That very Nen Aura prevented every door on the first floor from being opened or destroyed!

"To seal off an entire building and keep every wall and door this strong... just how harsh would the restrictions have to be to achieve this?"

"Who activated this ability, and what are they trying to do...?"

"And those empty cars that appeared out of nowhere-do they belong to the enemy?"

Drobada had called Dio the moment he noticed something was wrong, explaining the situation outside.

First, one thing was certain: every door connecting the building to the outside had been sealed shut. The windows and walls now seemed capable of withstanding even rocket fire.

Drobada silently withdrew his gaze from the gangster firing a rocket launcher at a window.

Second, he had overheard people searching the parking lot. Thanks to the requirement to register vehicles under real names, they had identified two small cars whose owners were unknown.

The enemy had apparently already infiltrated the venue. The useless security guards responsible for screening the attendees were trapped inside too, leaving the auction's organizer with no one to vent his anger on.

Dio's reply was that he had left the auction hall ahead of time and had already left the top floor. He had also tried breaking a window by force.

But the result had been the same. It hadn't budged.

After discussing it, the two decided to meet at a secluded spot behind the first floor and try blasting a hole through the same wall with Nen Bullets, one from inside and the other from outside. But...

But...

Drobada dispelled the Nen Aura around his eyes, feeling no confidence whatsoever in their plan.

He could tell that the Nen Aura applied to the building seemed to bind the entire structure together as a single object.

In other words, attacking a wall or a window was no different from striking the entire building at once.

An attack concentrated on a single point was dispersed across a whole surface. Its lack of effect was inevitable.

In a stairwell near a turn in the second-floor staircase, Dio lowered his phone after ending the call and beckoned the two women to follow him.

Behind him, Bokushin's scalp prickled as she listened to the faint, agonized screams drifting down from the third floor.

She didn't know what had happened, but she knew that if she hadn't listened to Dio and left immediately, her own voice might have joined those screams upstairs.

"No gunshots, only screaming. Is this an enemy attack? How are they doing it?"

"And that window... even bullets couldn't break it..."

Bokushin felt increasingly lost. Instinctively, she wanted to question Dio, who looked utterly calm. He had to know something.

But just then, she heard an airy, slightly husky voice:

"Mr. Dio... is that window a martial artist too? Can it use [Nen]?"

Mumuzawa's earlier gloom vanished. Her eyes curved into crescents as she gave Dio a "friendly" look.

Dio remained perfectly composed, but a bead of awkward, cold sweat appeared on his face.

After a moment's consideration, he decided there was little point in continuing to brush her off now. Resigned, he said:

"No, Your Highness. This is clearly an enemy's ability. They're trying to trap us here until we die!"

At last, Mumuzawa looked satisfied and triumphant. Her slightly chubby face took on an adorable slyness, as though she were saying, You can't fool me this time~.

But a second later, she remembered that Dio had mentioned an "enemy attack." Only then did the danger begin to feel real, and worry crept onto her face.

"Is the enemy strong, Mr. Dio?"

"All I can say is that their ability is powerful. But I suspect the thing killing people upstairs is someone else's ability."

Dio had kept his Ripple Radar active the whole time. No one understood the building's current situation better than he did.

Earlier, while he was in the auction hall, his Ripple senses had suddenly begun to fluctuate, instantly putting him on alert.

He had immediately used Ripple Radar to examine the entire third floor in detail, allowing them to escape that silent monster.

In fact, he still didn't know what was carrying out the slaughter on the third floor. Even when he sent Ripples over, he couldn't make out anything there.

In theory, as long as something had a physical form and touched a wall or the floor, his Ripples could travel to it.

Yet now, his Ripples clearly detected a physical presence but couldn't reach it through either the walls or the floor.

Could it fly?

Even so, tiny vibrations convinced him that a "floating" monster really did exist in those places where there were no footsteps.

Abilities? [Nen]?

Are they speaking in riddles?

Bokushin had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

What's going on? Why does it feel like I'm the only one out of my depth?

And who is Mr. Dio?

Wasn't his name Bai Lianna?

Mumuzawa seemed to have shaken off the self-pity that had consumed her a few hours earlier. Now her eyes began darting about.

She noticed Bokushin's confusion but had no intention of explaining anything to her.

After all, it had taken her three whole days from discovering something unusual to forcing Dio to admit that supernatural powers existed. She had even spent several hours feeling miserable!

She wasn't that-

-kindhearted that she would clear up someone else's confusion. In that respect, she was quite similar to Dio.

Dio wasn't inclined to explain much either. His Ripple Radar showed enemies in more than one location...