"Theo, do you really want to do this?"
Twenty meters above the ocean, a girl with short purple hair peered over the edge of the cliff. Her eyes tracked the deceptively calm water below. Every muscle in her body screamed that this was a terrible idea.
Next to her, a teenage boy stood in nothing but his swim trunks. A bucket of seawater sat at his feet. He'd already dumped it over his head twice. Now he was doing stretches that looked more like a death ritual than a warm-up.
"Vi, if I don't jump, I can't train for the Eye of Death." The boy bent forward, touching his toes. Water dripped from his hair. "If I can't train for the Eye of Death, I can't take the Hunter Exam."
Vi blinked. "I'm sorry, what's the connection between those three things?"
"It's about mental fortitude." Theo took a deep breath and stepped toward the edge. Gravel scattered under his foot, tumbling down the cliff face like tiny suicidal lemmings. He jerked his foot back. "Vi, stop talking! You're making me nervous again!"
"I didn't say anything!"
Theo jumped.
"Wait, no—"
Vi lunged forward, but he was already falling. Twenty meters of empty air. The ocean rushed up to meet him like an old friend with a grudge.
Then she saw it.
A shadow beneath the water. Growing. Fast.
She'd grown up in this seaside town. She knew what that meant. Something big was surfacing. Something with teeth. And Theo was diving straight into its mouth.
The boy saw it too.
Everything slowed down. The spray of seawater. The rising surface. The expanding shadow underneath. Breaking waves. He could smell it now. Rotting fish. Seaweed. Blood.
And wait, why were there heads near its mouth?
Water exploded.
A sea monster breached the surface. Eight, maybe nine meters wide. Jaws full of teeth like broken bottles.
"THEO!" Vi's voice cracked. Tears blurred her vision. "I told you not to think about becoming a stupid Hunter—"
She stopped.
The water around the monster hadn't turned red. Instead, there were people. Four figures treading water, holding the creature's mouth open like they were inspecting a car engine. The monster looked terrified. It didn't dare close its jaws.
Vi wiped her eyes.
Three guys, one girl. The monster floated between them like a confused dog at the vet. One of the men was waving up at her. The most handsome one, naturally. Dark hair, sharp features, probably mid-twenties. He was shouting something she couldn't hear.
Next to him, a black-haired girl in glasses fished a pair of broken frames from the water. Her expression suggested she'd seen weirder things before breakfast.
The other two men, one blond and one with long white hair worked together to pull Theo out of the monster's gullet. Seawater and mucus poured off the boy as they hauled him up like a drowned cat.
"Cough! Ugh—" Theo vomited seawater. Then vomited again. His arm hung at an unnatural angle.
The white hair one touched Theo's shoulder. The boy screamed.
"Broken arm," the guy said. "A few ribs too."
"You, you guys..." Theo stared at them with the glazed expression of someone reconsidering their life choices.
"Mild concussion," he added.
The handsome one paddled over and slapped Theo's arm. The spot where he touched it glowed faintly for a second. "What's today's date?"
Theo thrashed in the water, choking. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"What's the date?" the man repeated calmly.
"I can't—" Theo swallowed a mouthful of seawater. "I can't breathe—"
The handsome guy sighed. He looked like he was three seconds away from drowning himself on purpose. "We should probably get him to shore first."
The man with long white hair glanced at the mark on Theo's broken arm. A five-pointed star, glowing faintly beneath the skin.
The handsome one grinned. "I've seen yours, you've seen mine. We're even." He turned to the black-haired girl. "Shizuku, let's go!"
"Okay."
They both dove underwater and shot toward the shore like human torpedoes.
"I never agreed to being even..." the long hair guy muttered. He reached up like he wanted to adjust his hat, then remembered it had been lost somewhere in the ocean days ago. With a sigh, he grabbed Theo with one hand and started swimming toward land, using his other hand to part the water.
Two splashes echoed from above.
Liam and Shizuku burst from the ocean like twin missiles, nailing themselves to the slick cliff face several meters above the waterline. They climbed in perfect sync, moving fast enough that Vi forgot to breathe.
Behind them, the blond guy watched the sea monster slink away into deeper water. The creature's aura flickered and died. Liam must have released it.
The blond guy—Kurapika—let out a slow breath.
These past few days at sea had been brutal. Without Liam's Nen ability to control fish, without Shizuku's impossible vacuum cleaner that stored supplies, they'd all be dead. Drowned. Food for the same monsters they'd just hitched rides on.
Sometimes human power had limits. The ocean didn't care how much aura you had.
Also, their phones were destroyed. Completely waterlogged. Even if they'd survived, the batteries were long dead.
Liam and Shizuku landed on the clifftop like twin shadows.
Vi fell backward with a yelp.
"So," Liam said, brushing imaginary dust off his clothes. "What's the date?"
Shizuku waved her hand. A ball of aura materialized into a bulging-eyed fish holding a vacuum cleaner. She pointed it at both of them, sucking every drop of seawater from their clothes and skin. It vanished into the vacuum without a trace.
Vi stared at the fish. The fish stared back with soulless bulging eyes.
Liam snapped his fingers. "Hey. Date. What is it?"
"Uh." Vi tore her gaze away from the nightmare fish. She looked down at the sea, checking to make sure Theo was still alive. The long hair guy were climbing up with the boy on someone's back. "It's January first. 1996. Morning. Um..." She glanced at her watch. "Five fifty-five."
Liam's face did something complicated. Like he'd just bitten into a sandwich and found hair.
"For the love of—" He punched the air. "We're too late! We're too late, right?" He spun toward the long hair guy, Kite.
The man climbed over the cliff edge, still carrying Theo piggyback style. He set the boy down and started wringing out his shirt. "Far as I know, yes."
He squeezed the fabric. Water splattered on the rocks. "Hunter Exam registration opens in December. Lasts until the end of the month." Another squeeze. More water. "The exam itself starts in January. So yeah." He looked at Liam. "You missed it."
"You're sure it's the first?" Liam turned back to Theo and Vi. "Where's the nearest place we can register for the Hunter Exam? A kiosk, internet cafe, hotel, something. Where is it?"
Liam knew from the manga that even remote places like Whale Island had self-service registration machines. The Hunter Association made the application process stupidly accessible. It was the exam itself that killed you.
Theo stared at the four of them. Then at the ocean. "I'll, uh. I'll take you there. But last year's registration really did end. It's over."
"Talk while we walk."
Liam tapped the kid's arm. Theo winced. "And where the hell are we, exactly?"
He gestured for Vi to lead the way and waved at Shizuku and the others to follow.
Kite said nothing. Kurapika wrapped his wet jacket around his waist and fell in line. None of them said anything about their time at sea. If thought bubbles existed, all four would show the same image: not a registration kiosk, but a hot meal.
On the way, they learned this stretch of coast belonged to a small town on the western shoreline of the Yorbian Continent, smack in the middle of Kukan'yu Kingdom territory.
Liam mentally pulled up the Hunter x Hunter world map. The Yorbian Continent sat second from the left on a chain of six continents. Kukan'yu Kingdom was one of the V5 nations. It also happened to be where the Hunter Association had its headquarters.
In other words, if they wanted, they could trek across an entire continent and spend several months walking to the Association's front door.
Except they'd already missed this year's exam.
So they might as well take their time. Maybe sign up for next December.
Liam mentally rolled his eyes at himself.
The Hunter Exam wasn't even that useful to him anymore. Sure, the license had perks, but Liam didn't care about the "diploma" aspect. What he needed was guidance. Actual training. He'd hit a wall in his Nen development. For months now, his aura had been stuck. He needed someone to help him break through.
Passing the exam would get him into the Hunter Association. No weird sect hierarchies or "inner disciple" nonsense. Just access to veteran Hunters who could point out where he was screwing up. That was worth more than any license.
But then the whole death energy thing happened. The hidden danger in his heart that aged him rapidly—that crisis had been dealt with. Kind of. The urgency to take the exam had dropped significantly.
Plus, with his Nen ability, he didn't need to worry about aura capacity anymore. The upper limit would take care of itself.
If training didn't work?
He'd just add more points.
Liam glanced at his internal status screen. The death energy panel.
Days drifting at sea had been unlucky and embarrassing, sure. But not entirely useless.
You had to eat, right?
Shizuku's vacuum fish stored plenty of supplies. But when they passed schools of fish, she'd summon a chainsaw and throw it. They'd feast on fresh seafood.
Liam had gained a lot from those meals.
The little gray figure sitting in the hexagon of his death energy panel now had eleven gray streams flowing around it.
He thought for a moment, then dumped eight points into the Enhancement system in one corner of the hexagon. Another point went into both the Emission system and the Transmutation system.
The numbers next to Enhancement jumped from 60.6% to 68.6%. Emission and Transmutation went from 80.4% to 81.4% and 61% to 62% respectively.
The six Nen types were interconnected. When one improved, the others benefited. After he injected those ten points, the final results were: Enhancement 60.6% → 69.2%, Emission 80.4% → 82.2%, Transmutation 61% → 62.6%.
As a side effect, the Conjuration system—adjacent to Transmutation—also ticked up from 80.8% to 81%.
Liam thought to himself: Adding points to one system boosts the others too. This saves so much effort.
With the Conjuration system at 81%, if he actually bothered to train it, the difficulty would be similar to when he first practiced Emission. Meaning, basically no difficulty.
But just because it was easy didn't mean he'd start. First, his focus was limited. Second, he didn't have a good idea for a Conjuration ability yet. So it was on hold.
As for the last point of death energy... Liam looked at the final gray stream circling the little gray man. He planned to keep it and digest it slowly to increase his total aura reserves.
The hexagon looked beautiful now. Even the worst corner sat at 62.6%. Aesthetically pleasing.
His total aura hovered around 25,211.
One point of death energy left to "refine." That single point could train at least a few hundred more aura. If he was lucky, maybe a thousand.
Everything felt vibrant and alive.
Liam shifted his consciousness across the ocean to another island. To the miserable tiger he'd left behind.
He moved Lumos's legs experimentally. Satisfied with the weight loss results.
Liam Lumos was running through the woods of Ghost Island. Wandering near the Elf Amusement Park. Secretly watching the few tourists who'd shown up today.
He'd done this before. Possessed Lumos's body and spotted a little blonde girl dealing with a fake jewelry merchant near the park. That girl was none other than the respectable and adorable Biscuit Krueger.
A teacher like that? You don't let her go.
So Lumos had tried to get closer. Make friends. Get acquainted without fighting. After all, this was Ghost Island, protected by the Moon Tiger Reserve. Aunt Bisky wouldn't just "kill the tiger with one hand." And didn't they say all good Hunters were loved by animals? So approaching her as an "animal" made sense, right?
But the moment Liam-Lumos stepped within a certain distance, Bisky vanished.
One second she was there. The next, an afterimage. The blonde "little girl" who'd been smiling and reasoning with the scammer just disappeared.
Bisky had known Lumos was there the entire time.
Lumos realized this far, far too late.