The high-frequency shriek of Mantis's left blade had changed pitch. It no longer buzzed with the dry, rhythmic vibration of an insect's wing; it whined like a mechanical saw forced through dense steel, tearing at the damp atmosphere inside the transit bay until the air smelled of ozone, burnt rubber, and scorched concrete.
Mantis stood five paces away. His right arm hung uselessly at his flank, the shoulder joint he had just forced from its socket dangling beneath torn connective tissue. Yet the aura surrounding his intact left forearm was noticeably denser, sharper, and far more volatile than it had been at the start of the ambush.
Yuzuki lay flat against the blood-soaked gurney mattress, his Six Eyes tracing the altered flow of the beast's Nen.
The raw volume of Mantis's pool had not increased. His overall output remained modest compared to even a fraction of Yuzuki's base reserves. What had shifted was the concentrated density along the remaining bone blade. By inflicting deliberate, painful damage upon his own body, Mantis satisfied a strict self-imposed condition, focusing his aura into the surviving edge to sharply increase its cutting power.
'Sacrifice a limb to sharpen the remaining weapon,' Yuzuki evaluated, his breathing shallow as the chest drain pulled another dark measure of fluid into the plastic canister. 'It multiplies the edge's lethality, but it doesn't raise his ceiling. He's still playing with a fraction of my scale.'
Mantis lunged, driven by the frantic momentum of his condition. He threw his weight forward in a reckless, wide-angled charge, fully expecting a high-output defensive trade, another compressed Red or a wide-area spatial barrier that would test force against force.
Instead, Yuzuki remained completely still on the gurney mattress until the vibrating blade was three inches from his chest.
A microscopic Blue point flickered beside Mantis's lead heel, tugging his ankle sideways by less than an inch.
The tiny lateral pull destroyed Mantis's already compromised balance. The downward arc of his left blade shifted off course, missing Yuzuki entirely and burying itself four inches deep into the heavy steel gurney frame. The high-frequency vibration bit into the solid metal, transmitting a violent, shuddering torque directly back into his trailing shoulder and wrist.
Mantis shrieked, yanking the blade free with a desperate, frantic pull that threw his upper torso wildly off-center.
Yuzuki moved with weightless, fluid efficiency. Using Systema's core principle of momentum redirection, his left palm lightly guided the side of Mantis's neck, extending the beast's overreaching tilt. Simultaneously, a second micro-Blue pull dragged Mantis's dangling, dislocated right arm straight across the recovery path of his own left weapon.
The vibrating edge sheared cleanly through his trailing right forearm. Before the beast could even register the shock, Yuzuki's right hand shot forward, delivering a concise, short-range strike directly to his jaw.
The impact snapped Mantis's head sideways. His knees folded instantly, the high-frequency vibration along his blade sputtered out, and he collapsed unconscious onto the damp floor.
Using a fine thread of Blue, Yuzuki hauled a length of heavy cable from the nearby wreckage, bound Mantis's remaining limbs tightly, and dragged his limp frame beside the unconscious Owl. The entire decisive exchange had taken less than four seconds.
Yuzuki sagged back against the blood-soaked gurney mattress, his breath breaking into shallow, ragged gasps.
"Yuzuki-sama...!"
The lead orderly hurried forward from the bulkhead shelter, his hands shaking violently. The three medical workers were physically uninjured, and the unconscious patient remained stable, but when the orderly reached the side of the transport board, his face went deathly pale.
Blood was pouring freely from beneath Yuzuki's thoracic brace. The swift, precise Systema movement had widened his already-reopened right-flank wound, while the mechanical strain reignited severe, burning agony through his arms, lower back, and spine. Deep within his chest cavity, the lung tissue damaged by Hollow Purple yielded further under the stress, causing the chest-drain canister to bubble with alarming speed as blood and air churned through the tubing.
Yuzuki closed his eyes beneath his dark silk mask, focusing every drop of his remaining consciousness inward.
'Search... for the warmth,' he thought, gritting his teeth against the searing pain.
He searched for the remembered circulation pattern from Hollow Funeral. The precise instant when two opposed aura currents had inverted and combined to produce that miraculous, restorative warmth. He could remember the sensation vividly, but he still could not reconstruct the intricate sequence. His core remained cold, inert, and depleted. No healing came; tissue remained torn, and the crimson stain expanded rapidly across his hospital gown.
'A comfortable victory on paper,' Yuzuki thought with a bitter trace of dry wit, feeling the cold dampness of the tunnel air against his feverish skin. 'Yet I'm bleeding out on a gurney.'
Reaching into the medical transport pouch hooked to the gurney rail with a trembling hand, he pulled out his encrypted satellite communicator and thumbed the relay switch.
Static.
"Bisky..." Yuzuki rasped, his throat raw. "The tunnel lane is clear... Do you copy?"
"...zuki! ...munication lines... needles... upper levels locked—"
CRACKLE.
The feed severed entirely.
Yuzuki didn't waste energy trying to restart the device. Expanding his perception upward through the concrete, his Six Eyes caught several arena staff members moving with thin, foreign aura signatures concentrated at needle-sized points near their skulls. Around those controlled figures, electrical relay panels had been forced open and main emergency communications wires were being physically severed one by one.
Illumi's needlework.
Yuzuki expanded the passive detection grid of his Six Eyes farther upward, threading his perception through the tower's overlapping aura signatures.
Five familiar, heavy auras held position inside Chrollo's master suite on the 200th floor. Around them, eight distinct, highly aggressive signatures were converging through separate maintenance routes. Te remaining Shadow Beasts deployed under the Ten Dons' assault order.
Owl and Mantis had been genuine Mafia killers sent to eliminate him. But intentionally or not, they had drained his reserves just before a separate, far more dangerous contract closed in.
Threaded through the chaotic upper levels were three presences. Colder, sharper, and infinitely more disciplined than any Mafia enforcer.
'Wrong,' Yuzuki realized, recognizing the distinct, metallic texture of Zoldyck aura from his previous meeting with Zeno. In the canon story he remembered from his past life, the Ten Dons had hired Zeno and Silva specifically to hunt the Phantom Troupe. But those two presences weren't moving toward Chrollo's suite on the 200th floor. They were descending rapidly through the heavy freight shafts directly toward him.
The timeline had shifted. Someone else had commissioned them to target him.
One of the three presences moved laterally toward Bisky's sector. If the pair descending on him were Zeno and Silva, the third was almost certainly Illumi. Whatever his exact orders were, his route placed him directly between Bisky and Yuzuki. The other two were closing the distance to the subterranean transit bay second by second.
"Yuzuki-sama?" the orderly whispered, staring at the fresh crimson soaking through the gurney sheets. "Should... should we attempt to move toward the surface?"
"No," Yuzuki commanded softly, his voice firm despite his physical state. "Stay behind the bulkhead. Don't move."
He braced his palm against the gurney rail and swung his legs over the edge. Pain shot through his reopened flank and fractured ribs, but he forced his uninjured right leg to bear his weight, dragging himself upright against the concrete wall.
He stood.
His hospital gown was ruined with blood, his breathing a harsh, rattling hiss as his failing left lung fought the chest drain.
In the quiet darkness of the transit route, the two cold presences reached the lowest staging level, stepping into the primary corridor just a hundred metres away.
---
Find early chapters on my patreon
[Patreon.com/tenten100?]