A sickening hobby

"Let's go. It's time we got moving, too. The Chimera Ants that left won't behave themselves." Kite led the way out of the Chimera Ant nest.

The fresh air lifted everyone's spirits.

The meatballs and skeletal remains piled inside the Chimera Ant nest had been almost unbearable.

Joey truly couldn't understand why, after witnessing that hellish scene, Morel would be moved by what happened later.

And why would he choose to shelter the Chimera Ants that defected to their side?

Joey figured that perhaps his perspective was too limited to see the whole picture, or perhaps he simply wasn't the sort of person who was easily moved.

In any case, he had no affection for these Chimera Ants. Not slaughtering them all after seeing the state of their nest was his final concession to the human memories they possessed.

But even with those memories, could these monsters still be the humans they had once been?

Joey couldn't figure it out, and he didn't intend to try.

He would simply follow his heart. He would cooperate with the Chimera Ants, but he would never truly consider them companions.

Human diversity meant that everyone was bound to think differently.

He didn't ask others to agree with him, nor would he force himself to agree with them.

At least when it came to dealing with the Chimera Ants, he and Kite were almost entirely in step.

No matter what, they would always remain wary of the Chimera Ants.

Even though Joey knew that, during the final battle in the anime, the Chimera Ants that joined their side had played a useful role.

But his ingrained values gave him no basis for trusting beings of another kind.

Perhaps people in this world, where magical beasts existed, could accept demihumans and magical beasts, but Joey still needed time to learn about them and interact with them.

When that time came, he might change his mind and accept the Chimera Ants' existence.

Or perhaps...

"Word has come in from the checkpoint. Everyone there is dead. The backs of their heads and the bones at the backs of their necks were gouged out in an instant."

Throughout their journey, Andrei had stayed in contact with the outside world, both to ascertain the Chimera Ants' movements and to confirm the Hunters' actions.

Now, as he delivered the news, his expression inevitably grew more solemn.

"It was probably that leopard-type Chimera Ant I saw." Joey thought of Gido.

"He's not our concern. Our targets are ordinary Soldier Ants." Kite had already laid out their plan. "The main purpose this time is to give Joey actual combat experience so he can hone himself. The chairman and the others will handle the troublesome Chimera Ants."

"That doesn't sound much like you." Andrei looked somewhat surprised.

"Our team's assignment is the same as Knuckle's: do our best to eliminate the scattered Chimera Ants and gather information about Meruem along the way." Kite spoke as he walked.

"We must be careful and avoid any possibility of contact with Meruem or his Royal Guard. If we encounter them, losing members of our team might be the best outcome."

Kite's words were cold, but true.

As the only man who had fought a member of the Royal Guard, his words carried particular weight.

"Have you found anything on the Hunters targeting Joey?" Kite then changed the subject and asked about another matter.

"Yes. It's still Pokkle. He seems to have run into trouble and gotten mixed up with people from Kakin."

Andrei smiled confidently. Digging up this little bit of information posed no problem for him.

"How did Kakin get involved?" Joey was dumbfounded. The Kakin Empire wasn't in the Balsa Islands.

"Because of the narcotics trade. Yoshikage Kira visited the Kakin Empire quite often, and according to the records, he was on fairly good terms with Kakin's Fourth Prince."

As he spoke, Kite took a document from inside his clothes and handed it to Joey.

Tserriednich Hui Guo Rou, Kakin's Fourth Prince, was the son of Unma.

He had countless ties to the Ai Yi Yi Family, one of Kakin's Mafia families.

And in Kakin, the main distribution channels for narcotics were all controlled by these Mafia families.

During a deal two months earlier, Yoshikage Kira had met the Fourth Prince, and the two had become friends.

Their friendship had not begun quietly, however. It had been accompanied by the gruesome deaths and disappearances of everyone in an entire convoy.

That convoy had belonged to Kakin's Eighth Prince, Salé-salé Hui Guo Rou, and had included several beautiful women.

Enraged, the Eighth Prince had paid a hefty sum to hire professional Hunters to investigate the incident. In the end, they had narrowed their targets down to the Fourth Prince and the Narcotics Organization.

Meanwhile, the Detective Hunters investigating the incident had also pieced together the clues to deduce the perpetrator's general ability type.

But that was as far as they could get, because there was simply no way to investigate any further.

Neither the Fourth Prince nor the Narcotics Organization based in NGL was someone the Eighth Prince could afford to provoke.

But the matter had not ended there.

Although the Eighth Prince couldn't afford to provoke the Fourth Prince or the Narcotics Organization, he had kept the bounty in place to appease his private soldiers.

The Detective Hunters handling the case had also contacted Crime Hunters they knew, linking cases from several other locations to the convoy deaths.

Thus, they had narrowed the Murderer's identity down to a senior member of the Narcotics Organization.

The general scope of his ability had even been made public.

According to the documents, the Murderer possessed an ability that could make others disappear without a sound or trace.

The people or objects that disappeared would leave no trace in the world.

Ultimately, the most important piece of intelligence was that the Narcotics Organization harbored a Nen user who could silently erase corpses from the world.

With that information, anyone who saw Killer Queen use his ability would immediately identify Joey as the Murderer-a man in NGL who could use Nen and make corpses vanish without a sound!

Joey fell into thought as he read the documents.

"Kakin's Fourth Prince is a dangerous man." Andrei frowned and considered it for a moment, but ultimately offered the warning.

"Wait, that doesn't add up. Are these people trying to capture me to hand me over to the Eighth Prince?" Joey was puzzled.

No one would risk coming to NGL to capture him for the mere two hundred million Jenny bounty offered by the Eighth Prince. The effort and reward were nowhere near proportionate.

"No. To hand you over to the Fourth Prince!" Kite answered calmly. "The Narcotics Organization is finished, and you've lost its protection. To the Fourth Prince, you, with your air of mystery, are now either a rare collectible or one of the ideal candidates to make collectibles for him."

"Collectibles?" Joey frowned.

"Tserriednich likes collecting human organs. When a collectible he takes a fancy to is made on the spot from a living person, he considers it especially precious."

Kite's tone remained utterly level, yet what he described was the Kakin Fourth Prince's collecting obsession, so perverse it was sickening.

"Then are these people coming after me strong?" Joey remembered that the Fourth Prince should still be an ordinary person at this point, with no exposure to Nen.

"I don't know, but they're probably all skilled Mafia fighters. Knowing Nen is a basic requirement." Kite looked at Joey seriously. "Their numbers are unknown, and we have no information on them. Your job is to eliminate them."

"By myself?" Joey asked in surprise.

"Yes. Once we reach the designated location, Andrei will set up the Prisoner's Single Room. Then we'll leave and send Chimera Ants to you through the Single Room at irregular intervals.

"Your job is to stay alert at all times and eliminate those Chimera Ants."

Kite spoke as though he were discussing something as simple as eating or drinking, but Joey felt his scalp prickle as he listened.