Half a Tooth
September's blazing sun baked the bluestone slabs like hot irons, and Carl's soles hissed and scorched as she staggered backward.
Shattered fragments of stone lay everywhere. The shockwaves from their clash sent swathes of fine dirt flying, smacking against the courtyard wall.
The entire area outside the courtyard gate had long since been reduced to a mess by Carl and Hisoka.
"Whew~"
Barely managing to stop, Carl watched large beads of sweat fall from the ends of her hair and land in the dirt on the stone slabs, turning it into a patch of mud.
His lower abdomen had taken several heavy blows from Hisoka, and by now the pain felt as though it might split him open.
Fortunately, as Carl adjusted her breathing, the Nen Aura around her lower abdomen began to flow faster, easing the dull ache considerably.
His once-gaunt cheeks were now badly swollen. Two weeks ago, Hisoka had stopped holding back, and as a result, Carl had been forced to use his cheeks to strike Hisoka's fists dozens of times.
Fortunately, after taking so many punches, Carl's cheeks had long since gone numb, so he didn't feel much pain...
"Your breathing's gotten ragged~"
Hisoka licked the blood from his knuckles. Bungee Gum glimmered with the cold sheen of spider silk beneath the blazing sun.
Although training his junior disciple was great fun, even he got a little bored doing the same thing for too long.
Fortunately, Carl was improving quickly, which kept him at least a little interested~
"Hah!"
Carl gritted her teeth and drew on the Nen Aura inside her. Even when the Ten around her lower abdomen thinned considerably in an instant and the dull ache returned, it didn't stop him.
After observing him up close for a month, he knew that Hisoka only ever hit two places!
Either the cheeks or the lower abdomen!
"Hiss~"
The instant Bungee Love wrapped around his chest again, he let the Nen threads tear through his skin. As their pull lifted him into the air, he poured all his Nen Aura into his right arm.
Carl decided to take a gamble!
She bet that this time, Hisoka would attack his abdomen again!
Her wrist, elbow, and waist lined up, and every muscle Carl could use tensed, contracted, then expanded rapidly!
Only a thin layer of Nen Aura remained around him. In its place, a pale golden vortex of aura suddenly collapsed into his right fist!
Hisoka stepped back out of habit and leaned away, his face, marked with a green teardrop, twisting involuntarily.
He was already prepared to punch Carl in the lower abdomen!
But as the distance between them closed, Hisoka's pupils suddenly contracted-he saw Carl's right fist hidden behind her.
But it was already too late!
The instant her knuckles struck Hisoka's jaw, pale golden and pale purple Nen Aura collided, sending out a ring-shaped shockwave that startled the gray sparrows perched on the courtyard wall into flight.
"Crack!" Amid the grating sound of breaking bone, Hisoka flew backward and smashed through the courtyard wall. Half a bloodied molar lodged in a crack between the stones.
Carl fell to her knees among the shattered paving stones. Drops of blood spraying from her lower abdominal wound steamed into a bloody mist in the heat.
"Cough!"
Carl spat out a mouthful of clotted blood, staining the ground red in the blink of an eye.
Through his blurred vision, he saw Hisoka contorting himself as he forced his dislocated jaw back into place. His vicious grin stretched to his ears, making him look like a slit-mouthed demon.
I bet right!
After being beaten black and blue by Hisoka for over a month, he had long wanted to give the guy a punch!
Even a beast knew to bite back when bitten. He was a living, breathing person-could he just take a beating without fighting back?
"Crack!"
A piercing sound of bones grinding came from across from her as Hisoka forcibly snapped his dislocated jaw back into place.
"Ptoo!"
Hisoka spat half a broken tooth and a mouthful of blood onto the ground.
The young man, blood covering the corners of his mouth, slowly pushed himself up, the smile on his face completely twisted.
Wave after wave of Nen Aura carrying icy killing intent poured from his body, lowering the surrounding temperature by several degrees.
Directly opposite him, Carl saw Hisoka walking toward her and hurriedly turned her head:
"Master, I surrender!"
After that final blow, all the Nen Aura around him was completely exhausted, and he felt as though he had been hollowed out.
Forget fighting Hisoka-even the fact that Carl could still move meant his technique was lacking and he hadn't managed to squeeze out all his Nen Aura!
"Go let it out in the forest, Hisoka."
Lianke's sandalwood fan suddenly appeared between them, and a knifehand made of pale purple Nen Aura severed Bungee Love.
Everything about this disciple she had picked up was good, except that his temperament was far too extreme!
That was precisely why she had deliberately arranged for Hisoka and Carl to spar over the past month!
She had wanted to temper Hisoka's disposition...
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have done much good...
Hearing her, Hisoka abruptly halted his raised foot.
His heated gaze swept over Carl from his long, narrow eyes, finally stopping on her mangled lower abdomen.
After hesitating for a moment, he slowly turned and walked toward the forest, one step at a time.
Only then did Carl breathe a sigh of relief.
The scent of irises drifted over on the hot wind. His vision blurred, and Lianke appeared instantly before him.
"You'd better maintain your Ten, or don't blame me if you die."
Lianke gave Carl's mangled lower abdomen a quick glance and said coldly:
"How many lives do you think you have?"
"You abandoned your defense completely and squeezed out all your Nen Aura to strike your senior disciple brother that hard?"
"If Hisoka hadn't held back, the best you could have hoped for was to leave behind an intact corpse!"
Lying on the ground, Carl managed a faint twitch of his lips. He had been beaten to the point of losing his temper back then-how could he have thought about all that...?
She lightly tapped Carl's bleeding wound with the tip of her foot, and pale purple vortices of aura sealed the ruptured blood vessels like a spiderweb:
"I charge a million Jenny to make a corpse presentable, but educating an idiot like you starts at fifty million Jenny."
As she spoke, the wound on Carl's abdomen stopped bleeding.
After examining Carl with Nen Aura and confirming that she was in no serious danger, Lianke continued:
"The stone slabs outside the courtyard gate cost fifty million Jenny in total. I'm putting it on your tab!"
With that, Lianke walked through the courtyard gate.
Carl was drowsy, but afraid she might fall asleep and never wake up, so she forced herself to draw on the last trace of Nen Aura in her body and wrap it tightly around the wound.
He lay there for quite a while before his drowsiness slowly faded and a little strength gradually returned to his exhausted body.
Carl planted her palm on the ground and pushed herself up, her forearm trembling. She leaned gently against the courtyard wall, gasping for breath.
"Flutter!"
A sudden roar came from deep in the forest as an ancient tree fell. A startled flock of owls swept over the courtyard wall, casting mottled shadows on Carl's bleeding back.
No need to think about it. Hisoka must be venting in the forest...
"I've grown!"
Carl lowered her eyes and murmured to herself.
In one month, she had gone from being beaten by Hisoka without any ability to fight back to breaking half of one of his teeth.
The difference was enormous!
That was Hisoka!
The super-pervert everyone feared in the anime from her previous life!
And he had actually been injured by Carl, just like that!
What do you know? I'm actually not bad myself!
Rusted shackles shattered deep inside his chest. Carl gazed at the pale golden Nen Aura in her palm as the world before her slowly sank into darkness.