Chapter Summaries

Joey and the others left the giant beast’s back by ascending through a strange boundary where distance and size became distorted, fighting off flocks of birds along the way. They emerged above a vast plain covered with forest-like monsters and spotted enormous flying creatures, ending with the group wondering whether the birds were gathering around piles of dung.

• Joey and the others abandoned their blood research and prepared to leave the giant beast’s back, saving the Mercenary Robot and deciding against using the Unknown Object's Request.
• Joey used Weather Report to lift everyone toward the hundred-meter boundary, where twenty-three birds of prey attacked.
• Joey destroyed one bird with First Bomb, while Ging twisted another with his Nen and swept away nearby attackers.
• Beyond the boundary, the group’s vision and sense of distance distorted, so they used Nen-infused God Script stones and calculated the birds’ positions to keep attacking.
• After three minutes, Joey and the others’ vision stabilized, revealing a vast plain covered with moving forest-like monsters and enormous cave-covered creatures overhead.
• Joey and the others noticed birds flying toward mound-like formations behind the forests that looked like piles of dung.

Joey and his companions crossed a vast plain where gigantic monsters hunted and scavenged, while discussing the mysterious powers of God Script. On the seventh day, they reached a massive river and spotted a towering building on the far bank.

• Ging chose a direction across the plain, and Joey and the others watched a pangolin-like monster kill a frog monster while birds and hyena-like creatures fed on the fallen forest monster.
• Joey and his companions stayed airborne and traveled across the seemingly endless plain, then camped in a dense forest and took turns keeping watch for approaching forest monsters.
• Joey, Ging, Dwun, and List discussed studying the forest monsters' God Script, and Joey speculated that God Script might have succeeded somewhere beyond the lands they had explored.
• After adapting to travel across the plain and collecting monster materials, Joey and his companions reached a broad, black river on their seventh day.
• Joey magnified the view across the river and confirmed that a towering building stood on the opposite bank.

Joey and his companions studied the dangers around the Tower and chose to cross the river despite the monster birds guarding its banks. They fought their way through the first stretch of dead woods and reached the river, but another dangerous forest still stood between them and the Tower.

• Ging, Joey, Dwun, and Ida agreed to investigate the Tower and cautiously approached the river.
• Joey and the others observed mosasaurs, giant pythons, and monster birds that used Nen clones to attack creatures crossing the river.
• The group decided to force their way through the monster birds rather than kill the birds atop the trees and risk attracting more threats.
• Joey guided the group close to a cliff-face monster, and they fought the bird clones alongside the birds of prey emerging from its body.
• Joey and his companions crossed the first stretch of dead woods and reached the open sky above the river, with another stretch of woods still ahead on the opposite bank.

Joey and his companions entered the Tower, where a welcoming giant revealed that the hospitality was a trap and attacked them with an army of strange men. The battle escalated when Joey discovered the attackers were balloon-like beings whose explosions released hydrogen, leaving the group to defend themselves against a massive blast.

• Joey and his companions crossed the river and cautiously approached the Tower through its orchard, where they found enormous footprints and could not probe the Tower with En.
• A horned, winged giant opened the Tower door and invited Joey and the others inside, then led them to a campfire beside a wooden house and a wary monster.
• Ging identified signs that another group had been there, prompting the giant to admit that Joey and his companions had entered a trap and attack Ging with a sickle.
• Ging struck the giant, while hidden figures leaped from the stairs and Joey used En to detect that many more attackers were lurking above.
• Joey and the Weather Nen Beast burst the balloon-like attackers with Ice Spires, but their bodies released hydrogen that ignited around the campfire and torches.
• Joey's companions sheltered behind a glowing shield reinforced by the Mercenary Robot as Joey prepared to control the atmosphere beyond the explosion.

Joey used Weather Report to deprive the Tower of oxygen and flood it with carbon dioxide, helping him and Ging defeat the hydrogen-wielding opponent and his creatures. As the group climbed the enormous Tower, Joey discovered the insects below could recover from their injuries and froze them with liquid nitrogen.

• Joey equipped the group with oxygen masks, removed oxygen from the Tower, and filled the space below with carbon dioxide to stop the hydrogen clones from exploding.
• Joey’s ice spires attacked the clones, while Razor killed the opponent’s pet and gave Joey and Ging the signal to strike.
• Ging punched the hidden opponent out from beneath the stairs, and Joey’s coin activated First Bomb, reducing the man to ash.
• Joey and the group used the Mercenary Robot’s lights to reveal the hornet-like insects, which panicked and fell onto the ice spires.
• Joey discovered that many fallen insects were only temporarily incapacitated and rapidly healed, then gave one to Dwun and List.
• After the group climbed a thousand meters, Joey froze the surviving insects with liquid nitrogen instead of setting the Tower alight.

Joey and his companions climbed the Tower, discovered that its statues were awakened by moonlight and restrained by being watched, and found a way to damage them. After Joey’s attack triggered a statue’s stored power, explosions spread through the Tower as Ging pulled him toward the exit.

• Joey and his companions found God Script reading “seal” among the statues, while Ging suspected the statues might run on sunlight and warned Joey against attacking them.
• Joey, Ging, Dwun, and List reached a massive door at the top of the stairs, and Dwun later found a giant key outline on a sealed window.
• Ging chose to break through the door rather than expose the statues to sunlight, and Joey used Killer Queen to make a hole in it.
• Moonlight entered the Tower and awakened the statues, which stopped moving when Joey and Ging watched them; cracks and silver light began spreading across the sealed windows.
• Joey tested the statues’ stored power by striking one with an explosive coin, causing it to rupture and blast apart nearby statues.
• Ging grabbed Joey and leaped through the doorway as explosions began throughout the Tower.

Joey and Ging escaped the Tower as its statues and staircase began transforming, then fought off swarms of insects and Monster Bird clones while Dwun used the key to activate a formation on the Tower's summit. A surge of Life Energy flashed, and everyone atop the Tower vanished.

• Joey and Ging fled the Tower after moonlight caused its statues to reassemble and its staircase to come alive, and Joey discovered that his Nen inside the Tower had been severed.
• Ging retrieved Dwun's key from the Tower as a pursuing statue and insect limbs pressed against the doorway; Joey and the others froze and attacked the insects as they poured outside.
• Joey identified the diving Monster Birds as Nen-made copies, and Razor destroyed one wave while Dwun caught the key and drove it into the summit's God Script formation.
• Joey used En to locate more Monster Birds and struck them with thunder and winds, while List revealed that the source of the monsters was inside the Tower.
• The insect swarm dove toward Dwun, but flames burned it back as Dwun pushed the key fully into the formation and unleashed a surge of Life Energy.
• The Life Energy dispersed the flames and clouds, and everyone atop the Tower vanished; Monster Bird corpses fell onto the summit as the doorway sealed itself.

Joey and Ging explored the Tower’s core, where platforms held strange constructs that drained heat from anything touching them. After the Deputy Director revealed the Exploration Team’s horrific experiments and tried to escape into a construct, Joey contained him, then headed down the Tower to investigate its depths.

• Joey, List, and Ging discovered that the Tower was filled with platforms bearing strange constructs, and List found that touching one drained heat.
• Joey noticed the God Script word “Prohibition” on a platform as he and List discussed exploring the Tower and questioned the Deputy Director.
• The Deputy Director explained that the Exploration Team had created constructs through countless deaths and hinted that he had once belonged to the team.
• The Deputy Director tried to send his eye into a Dinosaur-like construct, but Joey sealed the eye and the rest of him in separate boxes, which List secured inside a glued Nesting Doll.
• Joey and Ging discussed the construct and the Exploration Team before Joey flew down through the Tower to investigate its depths.

Joey discovered that a blue ghost had been secretly influencing his emotions and tried to force it out of the Tower. Heating an aggregate transformed it into a golden cube, drawing the ghost into the open and leaving Joey to restrain it with black threads.

• Joey noticed his urge to destroy the Tower was unnatural, and a blue figure emerged from his body before Killer Queen could strike him.
• Joey concluded that the blue figure had been influencing his emotions and used flames to investigate the aggregates rather than attack the Tower.
• Joey's flames melted an aggregate and transformed its stone slab into a golden cube, which he caught using Mirage.
• A blue ghost rushed toward the cube, and Joey recognized him as a human from the city a thousand years ago.
• Joey trapped the ghost with black threads controlled by Killer Queen and ignited flames around him, while the terrified ghost begged for mercy.

Joey used the compulsion to make Blue Ghost mutilate himself before an unseen force erased him, then collected all five thousand Small Cubes from the Tower. After the group opened the Tower’s gate and emerged into the sky, Joey tested a Small Cube on attacking birds and absorbed them into it.

• Joey ordered Blue Ghost to give him body parts, and Blue Ghost tore out his limbs and organs before an invisible force distorted and erased him.
• Joey asked Ging whether Blue Ghost had said anything useful, then gave the Small Cube to Ging, List, and Dwun to study while he resumed collecting cubes.
• Joey gathered all five thousand Small Cubes over several days, and the group discovered that feeding Nen to the Tower’s door would open it.
• Razor used a Nen Bullet to open the gate, and Joey and the others emerged into the sky above another dark Tower before Joey used En to right their fall.
• Strange birds dived at the group, and Joey released a Small Cube that pulled them inside and began glowing with increasing Life Energy.

Joey and the others investigated the orchard around the Tower and discovered that its strange caretaker had returned despite Joey killing him. After watching the caretaker and a monster tend the Farm, Joey and Ging learned that monsters were transported through pipes inside the fruit trees, then decided not to continue exploring the Tower.

• Joey and Ging concluded that the Tower and the Monster Birds occupied separate spaces, then went down to the orchard to find food and investigate its upkeep.
• List identified the orchard footprints as belonging to the strange man Joey had killed, so Joey, Ging, and Razor watched the Tower while List and Dwun examined the crops.
• At midnight, the strange man and a glowing monster emerged from the Tower, worked in the Farm for four hours, and then returned inside.
• Joey and Ging discovered that monsters were hidden inside fruit trees and that fleshy pipes carried them through the trees from underground.
• Dwun suggested that the Farm might attack creatures approaching from outside, and Joey proposed testing the idea by throwing a monster toward it.
• Ging said the Tower was not their objective and decided they would leave rather than keep investigating.

Joey and Ging left the Tower behind to search for a group that might have reached it before them, crossing an orchard where a seductive fragrance lured beasts into grotesque trees. They entered a Forest whose creatures and plants lived at accelerated speed, then fled its nightly insect swarm and discovered the insects were devouring the Forest Monsters and even the Cliff Face Monsters.

• Ging explained why the vanished items in the Tower suggested that another group had arrived before them, and Joey agreed to leave the Tower and search ahead.
• Joey carried the team across the orchard, where they saw figures tend its trees at night and inferred that the Tower used captured Monsters' life energy to sustain the orchard.
• At the orchard's edge, Joey cut off a fragrance that had made the team ravenous, and they saw entranced Fierce Beasts devoured by twisted, tentacled trees.
• Joey and the others entered the Forest and observed its animals and plants completing their life cycles in about six hours before they sheltered in an ancient tree for the night.
• A vast insect swarm descended after dark and fed on the Forest; Joey silenced the surrounding atmosphere until the swarm retreated at dawn.
• The team fled upward from the Forest and saw insects feeding on the corpses of Forest Monsters and crawling over the Cliff Face Monsters.

Joey and his companions crossed a forest where time accelerated life, then struggled through a vast insect-infested wasteland. At dawn, they spotted another green region and a dark expanse ahead that suggested they were drawing closer to the World Tree.

• Ging urged the group to travel through the treetops to escape the deadly insects in the sky and underground.
• Joey and the others moved through the forest, where animals’ blood appeared to accelerate time and the animals gradually vanished as the effect weakened.
• The group entered a dead region filled with Monster Insects, and Joey used Weather Report to shield them with Spacesuits and flames.
• Ging suggested extinguishing the flames, and Joey shrank his En after realizing it was attracting the swarm; Ida used the Mercenary Robot’s sonic attacks to clear insects.
• After traveling through the insect grounds without resting, Joey and the others saw tall trees and a dark expanse on the horizon that they believed lay closer to the World Tree.

Joey and his companions traveled through a forest of towering Fierce Beasts and saw the World Tree’s branches spread across the sky. Joey embraced the next stage of their adventure and led the group toward the World Tree.

• Joey and the others crossed the insect grounds and entered a forest where dinosaur-like Fierce Beasts grew increasingly enormous.
• Ging spotted flying lizards resembling dragons, and Joey wondered whether the Zoldyck Family’s ancestors had visited the Dark Continent.
• Joey reflected on the calamities he had encountered and the dangers he still could not overcome.
• Joey, Ging, List, Dwun, Razor, Ida, and Elena realized that branches of the World Tree blotted out the sky like a continent.
• Ging declared that their real adventure was beginning, and Joey led his companions toward the World Tree.