The Death God could grow stronger by creating death.
But he himself didn't understand why only "killing humans" satisfied this condition.
What confused him even more was that the so-called human targets actually included the mutants and Gatekeepers of the Dark Continent, and even Magical Beasts with human blood flowing through their veins.
It was just that hunting these beings was no easy task for the Death God.
In comparison, the humans on the six continents... were far easier to deal with.
And their numbers were immense, making them a paradise-like existence for the Death God.
However, while his Death Plague could easily take the lives of ordinary people, it struggled to be effective against Nen users.
Back when he discovered Morena's modified human troops, if those people hadn't been scared out of their wits by the horrors of the Dark Continent, he might not have had the chance to exploit their weakness. But now, everything was different.
With the deaths of over a hundred million humans, his power was no longer what it once was.
Even though he sensed a powerful aura from Botobai Gigante, the Death God still held absolute confidence.
Morena was also observing the Death God's changes.
She knew that the Death God's power couldn't directly affect Nen users, which was why he needed the modified human troops to assist him.
Now that the first round of their world-ending plan was showing initial success, if the Death God's "growth" failed to meet expectations, the second round of their operation might be dead in the water. That would mean… she had taken the wrong path again, with no chance to start over.
Morena calmly retreated some distance, her gaze shifting between the Death God and Botobai.
A member of the Hunter Association's Zodiac Twelve...
Finally, her eyes settled on Botobai's face, which was covered in strange makeup, and she said to herself, He's a worthy test subject. Whether the path ahead would proceed as planned, pushing the entire world step by step into the abyss, would depend on the outcome of this confrontation. Thinking this, Morena's gaze shifted slightly, as if unintentionally sweeping over the deathly silent high-rises around them.
There are three more... hmm?
She suddenly sensed an anomaly in a hidden corner. Withdrawing her gaze without a trace, she corrected herself internally, It's four.
Besides Botobai in front of them, four other Association members had professionally sealed off all her possible escape routes.
She had locked onto the positions of three of them using the multiple biological sensory abilities she had fused from Chimera Ants.
But the last person's Zetsu was extremely refined.
If not for her snake-like thermal imaging ability, she probably wouldn't have detected their presence at all.
Despite this discovery, Morena was unconcerned, still focusing most of her attention on the duel between the Death God and Botobai.
At this moment, Botobai used his own ability to enhance his potential aura to its absolute limit.
Yet, upon seeing the bizarrely shaped Death God, an indescribable sense of crisis quietly bloomed in his heart.
He needed no evidence. Just this chilling intuition from their first meeting and the corpses littering the street before him... he had already concluded that the source of the recent mass death incidents was most likely this inhuman being before him.
Even so, he wanted to try probing with "words."
"So it was you..."
But just as Botobai spoke, the Death God attacked.
His jagged mouth suddenly gaped open, spitting out a murky gray Nen ring like a silent ripple.
The Nen ring appeared weak, its aura so faint it seemed like child's play, not even a fraction of the strength of a normal En.
But Botobai didn't dare to be the slightest bit careless.
The alarm bells that had taken root in his heart at first sight were now screaming at him.
So he unhesitatingly abandoned the thought of taking it head-on, leaping sideways at the last possible second and letting the gray Nen ring graze past him. Almost at the same instant, he stomped his foot, and the ground cracked as he shot toward the Death God like a cannonball.
Since the other party had no intention of talking, he would suppress it completely with force!
Botobai's charge was immensely oppressive.
However, the gray Nen ring he had just dodged suddenly expanded like a domain, enveloping the surrounding area.
The charging Botobai, the silently sneering Death God, and Morena, who had retreated to watch, were all within the range of this gray Nen ring.
This is... En?
The Nen ring expanded at the speed of light. Botobai had no way to react and was directly enveloped by it.
There's no way out. I have to suppress him as quickly as possible!
Inside the gray Nen ring, Botobai felt nothing unusual for the moment, but he made a judgment in an instant.
He continued his charge, attempting to finish off the Death God as fast as possible.
Only by doing so could he snuff out the potential threat of the gray Nen ring.
Botobai's judgment was undoubtedly correct.
But he had still underestimated the bizarre nature of a "Calamity."
Often, the abilities of the Calamities from the Dark Continent were purely unreasonable.
They did not operate on logic as it was normally understood, which meant that human combat experience was often rendered useless.
The Death God watched Botobai charge forward, brave and fearless, a silent sneer on his lips.
He had deliberately thrown out the gray ring and expanded it in a manner similar to En precisely to ensure Botobai would make a desperate, all-or-nothing charge at this moment.
This way, he could confidently apply the maximum power of his Death Plague to Botobai.
As for the possibility of giving Botobai a chance to one-shot him... such a thing was simply impossible.
The him of now was a being whose power was condensed from absorbing over a hundred million deaths.
Death Plague.
A gray vortex suddenly swirled in the Death God's eyes, and a dark gray luster, so dense it seemed tangible, appeared around his body.
Immediately after, the gray halo that had been enveloping the area abruptly retracted at the speed of light, precisely converging on Botobai, who had already charged right in front of him.
The next moment, the contracted gray Nen ring, like a potent acid, completely corroded away the powerful potential aura surrounding Botobai's body.
Wh–What!?
Botobai came to a screeching halt.
For a Nen user, Nen was their armor, their weapon, and the fundamental source of their energy in battle.
Once stripped of Nen's protection, even the most powerful Nen user would be plunged into extreme danger.
With his Nen inexplicably gone, Botobai didn't understand what kind of ability this was, nor did he have time to ponder why it was so domineering... all he could do now, the instant his charge was broken, was to retreat rapidly without hesitation, trying to create distance from the Death God.
The power called 'Nen' is indeed you humans' greatest weapon.
After stripping Botobai of his manifested Nen, the Death God extended a small arm from his serrated body, pointing it from a distance at the furiously retreating Botobai.
Even I, before I can kill you completely, must first make your 'Nen' 'die' completely.
That's right.
Strictly speaking, the Death God hadn't forced Botobai into a state of Zetsu.
Rather, using the power of the Death Plague, he had conceptually made the manifested Nen on Botobai's body die directly.
Of course, what died was only the potential aura that could be projected for offense and defense.
Botobai's body still contained a massive amount of potential aura, but after being eroded by the Death Plague, he would have to wait until the "corpse of his manifested Nen" completely dissipated before he could mobilize it again.
In other words, Botobai needed a certain amount of time to recover his potential aura.
And before that, in front of the Death God, he was no different from an ordinary human.
This also meant... as long as the Death Plague was released again, it could easily take Botobai's life.
And that was exactly what the Death God did.
After killing Botobai's manifested Nen, the next target was naturally Botobai himself.
From the finger the Death God pointed at Botobai, a gray thread as thin as a needle's tip shot out. It was so fast that it pierced through Botobai's head in a flash.
There was no warning, no sound, and no reaction from the impact.
Botobai, who had been rapidly retreating, suddenly fell toward the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, devoid of any sign of life.
It was too fast.
From the moment Botobai launched his attack to his death mid-retreat, the entire process took no more than three seconds.
Morena witnessed this scene, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly.
In just the first stage of the world-ending plan, the Death God already possessed such power, able to easily take the life of Botobai, a renowned powerhouse among the Zodiac Twelve.
In that case, when the second stage began, as the death toll skyrocketed, the Death God's power would continue to climb.
By then, humanity's greatest reliance, Nen, would be rendered completely meaningless.
At this thought, Morena's anticipation grew even stronger.
She didn't care in the slightest if the Death God would eventually erase her as well.
Or rather, she had never had the slightest concern about it.
If she could witness the world's destruction with her own eyes, she was willing to burn her own life away in the flames that consumed everything.
After killing Botobai, the Death God let out a series of sizzling, strange laughs.
Excellent... I can still become stronger. When that time comes, not even the Gatekeepers will be able to stop me.
The Death God was in an exceptionally joyous mood after personally experiencing the change in his growing power.
He was certain that as long as he continued to grow stronger like this, when he returned to the Dark Continent... whether it was the Gatekeepers or those other mutants with special abilities, they would all become prey for him to hunt at will.
The other four members of the Zodiac Twelve, Bushidora, Saccho, Ginta, and Gel, who were lurking in the surrounding shadows, all felt their hearts sink when they witnessed Botobai fall without any warning.
Before the operation, they had considered all sorts of possible scenarios, but they had never anticipated that Botobai, who could significantly enhance his frontal combat strength with Nen, would be inexplicably killed in two or three seconds.
And his death was so sudden, so without warning.
"The intel is wrong. We can't continue the operation."
As a psychologist, Saccho calmed down faster than the others and immediately gave a grim warning through their communication devices, "Everyone, retreat immediately."
After issuing the warning, he suppressed the urge to be the first to flee.
Since it was a joint operation, even if he now judged the mission to be impossible, he had to wait for his companions' responses before putting the decision to retreat into action.
"Retreat!"
Bushidora was the first to respond.
Ginta and Gel had witnessed the Death God's domineering lethality firsthand. They knew the gap between their current intel and the reality before them was massive, making the risk uncontrollable.
Under these circumstances, the two of them also made a swift decision, each choosing the best route to begin their withdrawal.
No matter what, they had to at least bring back the crucial intelligence that Nen was defenseless against that attack, and that it could force someone into a state of Zetsu.
On the long street littered with corpses, seeing the Death God make no further moves after finishing off Botobai, Morena couldn't help but remind him, "Don't let them get away."
"Don't worry."
The Death God was naturally aware that others were still hiding nearby.
His keen perception of life force was enough to render a Nen user's Zetsu useless.
As soon as he finished speaking, the Death God's figure blurred into a phantom, streaking straight toward the nearest target.
His body seemed to have no weight at all, and his flight speed was astonishingly fast.
In just a few seconds, he caught up to the desperately fleeing Bushidora.
Dammit, how is he so fast!
Sensing the danger behind him, Bushidora whipped his head around, only to see the Death God closing in from the air. His face instantly turned deathly pale.
Remembering that even Botobai, the strongest among them, had been easily slain, a heavy shadow of death instantly fell upon his heart.
But even if there was only a sliver of a chance to struggle, Bushidora didn't want to just sit and wait for death.
However, it was all meaningless.
In a sense, the Death God's ability was the absolute bane of humanity.
In his presence, the life and death of an ordinary person was decided in a single thought.
As for Nen users, it just meant adding one more step: "making their potential aura die."
Just as Bushidora realized he couldn't escape and decided to fight to the death, his "potential aura" vanished.
What is this monster!?
Without the protection of his Nen, Bushidora's "life" was directly exposed to the Death God.
Then, the moment of withering arrived.
The look of astonishment on Bushidora's face froze in an instant. Without even a chance to counterattack, his entire body suddenly slumped to the ground.
When his body hit the ground with a thud, all signs of life were already gone.
After finishing off Bushidora, the Death God successively caught up to Ginta and Saccho.
Giving these two Zodiacs no chance at all, the Death God took their lives from a medium-long range.
Humanity's so-called individual strength was utterly meaningless in the face of this unsolvable ability, this personification of death.
Finally, the Death God caught up to Gel.
Knowing that her opponent could lock onto her position and completely outmatch her in speed, Gel gave up on running. Her eyes were cold as she watched the approaching Death God.
"A Calamity from the Dark Continent?" she asked coldly.
At the same time, an aura of Nen swirled around her, faintly revealing a snake-shaped Nen beast, its head connected to its tail.
The Death God didn't respond, merely giving a silent, cold laugh as he activated his ability against Gel.
The next instant, Gel's life was extinguished, and she fell to the ground.
Oh?
The Death God was somewhat surprised.
He had only attacked Gel's Nen just now and had no idea that Gel would die directly, just like an ordinary person.
Just as the doubt surfaced in his mind, the Death God saw Gel's corpse suddenly transform.
In just a second, it turned into a layer of snakeskin.
Shedding skin?
The Death God stared at the layer of snakeskin.
A moment later, Morena arrived at the scene.
"One got away?"
The Death God pretended not to hear.
(Translated by yourtl.app)