The black shadow with eight arms wrapped around Gel from behind, moving to swallow her whole.
Gel didn't even flinch. As the eight-armed shadow engulfed her, she smoothly peeled herself out from the side, leaving behind what looked like an empty shell.
The eight-armed shadow crushed the shell into pieces.
Gel had already escaped.
Conjuration ability: Snake Molt.
The eight-armed shadow clattered to the cave floor like spilled ink, then shot up at an angle like a black arrow.
It rushed at Gel's real body again.
A cell phone wrapped in white aura flew through the air like a brick, cutting off the shadow mid-flight.
The black shape bent and fell to the side, splashing back into a puddle of dark sludge.
Before the phone even landed, it dispersed into a sphere of aura.
Pyon the Rabbit waved her hand. The phone materialized back in her palm, good as new.
So that's how you use Conjuration?
Liam couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
Though come to think of it, Shizuku also liked to use Blinky as a melee weapon in close combat, smashing enemies over the head with a vacuum cleaner. Now that she'd upgraded to the chainsaw version, she'd probably switched from bludgeoning to sawing. You could imagine how lethal a chainsaw reinforced with aura could be.
The black sludge struggled. Multiple protrusions rippled across its surface like audio visualizer bars, and finally the eight-armed figure rose up again with a whoosh, rushing at Gel.
There were so many people here. Why did it keep targeting Gel specifically?
Liam and Shizuku both wondered the same thing. Soon they watched Gel transform one of her arms into a long snake. It hissed and opened its jaws wide, ready to strike.
Just as the shadow was about to pounce, it stopped mid-air. Eight skeletal hands hung frozen in front of Gel's calm face, then dissolved into black sludge that pattered to the ground at her feet.
Click-click-click!
Pyon's other hand was already holding a laptop, her fingers typing rapidly on the keyboard while gripping her phone.
At some point, her En that looked like flowing green code had expanded to cover the entire cave, inside and out.
A model of the eight-armed black figure appeared on the computer screen. Garbled code scrolled beside it, apparently analyzing this thing that had suddenly manifested.
"Were you detoxifying it just now?" Shizuku asked Gel curiously. The latter's arm shifted from a snake back to its normal form.
The motion, the process—Liam and Shizuku had seen this before in Wing's room. Gel had used the same method to detoxify Wing and his brother.
Liam said, "So you didn't detoxify yourself..."
Gel nodded. "I needed to confirm the true purpose of this poison."
She looked at Netero. "It seems the last poison left behind by that special clone was indeed meant to mark one or more targets for a final attack or struggle."
When the gray mist had filled the mountain summit earlier, Netero had gone to the front mountain to help disperse the fog and toxin. He'd relayed to Gel what "The Solitary Shadow in Heaven and Earth, Drunk Dreaming of Death and Life" had said when the gray mist finally exploded.
"No matter how my will changes, I will always exist, just like my resentment, just like this poison."
Gel had created an antidote and detoxified everyone on the mountain summit, but deliberately left some toxin in her own body unprocessed.
And sure enough, something had happened.
Changes were occurring again.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH..."
A sound formed by vibrating ripples of aura, strange and sharp in tone, suddenly echoed through the cave. The twisted eight-armed black shadow slowly rose from the sludge.
Pyon and Gel frowned simultaneously.
Shizuku covered her ears.
She glanced over and saw that Liam had simply used Gyo in reverse, removing all aura from his ears and entering partial Zetsu in that area.
With his ears in Zetsu state, he couldn't hear this so-called special chanting sound at all.
The little gray bird on Liam's shoulder, however, got dizzy from the strange noise. It toppled over on Liam's neck with its beak crooked and eyes spinning.
Netero raised one palm. Majestic aura surged out, slowly transforming into a giant hand that slapped down on the eight-armed shadow's head.
Like flattening a paper cutout, Netero pressed it from head to ground with a single palm strike.
A mountain of five fingers composed of white aura easily pinned it down.
This was Transmutation-type application.
With Netero's hundreds of years of practice, he could naturally utilize all six major Nen categories.
It was just that he had a relaxed personality. He preferred hand-to-hand combat with fists and kicks, fighting with pure martial arts. He was more willing to defeat any opponent head-on with an unmoving stance and enjoy the pleasure of the duel.
Energy, time, talent—he didn't lack any of them.
He could have developed countless strange and unpredictable special abilities if he'd wanted to. But he hadn't. If he'd had that kind of personality, he would've simply stayed in the Dark Continent and spent his whole life fighting with the nature there.
Conversely, it was precisely because of his mindset that he'd reached the absolute pinnacle on the Enhancement path that suited him best, becoming unrivaled in the world with his Hundred-Type Guanyin.
Not to mention, Transmutation was an adjacent category to Enhancement.
The practice of Shingen-ryu encouraged training in adjacent categories. Netero himself was the grandmaster of Shingen-ryu. He could use the two adjacent types, Transmutation and Emission, at his fingertips.
Liam thought all this as he watched.
The Five Finger Mountain pressed down. But Netero let out a soft "Hm." After lifting his giant hand, the thing that should have been flattened into a puddle had disappeared.
Pyon hit Enter. Data flowed rapidly across her screen.
"It escaped using the divine script!"
Post-mortem Nen!
Everyone present immediately thought of those words.
After so many years of independent development and alienation, the special clone Sky Master had created had finally become completely free of its original body when the strange poison was cleaned away. It had transformed into an extremely rare and powerful post-mortem Nen.
Only Netero's expression showed no concern. He'd probably anticipated this result when he'd helped Goya Hui Guo Rou create the unique clone.
For someone who would rather create a Nen clone to preserve a trace of life, you could imagine how strong their obsession was before death.
That obsession would be reflected in their Nen and undergo post-mortem transformation.
"The Solitary Shadow in Heaven and Earth, Drunk Dreaming of Death and Life" had spread gray mist across the entire summit to create hundreds or thousands of potential targets to choose from.
If they hadn't detoxified everyone, it probably would've attacked someone on the summit, possessed them or taken their body, then quietly descended the mountain and left.
This was its escape route.
Netero struck the cave wall with a palm from distance. Cracks spread across the stone, tearing the divine script apart. The Nen ability injected into it quickly disintegrated like dominoes.
The sharp chanting sound rang out again. A black shadow flew out from the pattern of divine script in the corner of the cave.
The shadow spread its eight twisted arms. A ferocious fanged mouth opened on its head. Long, narrow gray eyes stared at Netero as it roared with unwillingness.
Netero remained unmoved and struck out with another palm.
Green code-like En flowed. All the information perceived fed back to Pyon's laptop, transforming into lines of data that seemed chaotic but followed a pattern.
Pyon typed on her keyboard. "Its aura has started weakening. It's at the end of its rope. Even if you don't do anything, President, it will disappear completely within three days at most."
Netero slapped it away with his palm, breaking another corner of the stone wall.
The shadow fled.
Gel was sweating internally as she watched. The president was just playing around, wasn't he?
"Wait a moment." Pyon analyzed new content and looked closer. "This characteristic... President, I think you should be more careful. This thing seems to have potential similar to a parasitic Nen beast..."
The eight-armed black shadow, seemingly cornered by Netero's tactics, suddenly lunged toward Liam.
A black line appeared on Liam's forehead.
Dude, Why are you blindly throwing yourself at me?!
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