By the time the wetlands finally began to thin, Tonpa no longer trusted his own sense of time.
It could have been thirty minutes.
It could have been three hours.
Inside Numere Wetlands, time had not moved normally. It had dragged. Clung. Soaked into everything like the mud around their ankles. Moments that should have passed in seconds had stretched until they felt old.
Hisoka stepping through the fog.
The card flashing.
The body falling.
Those moments had lasted no more than an instant.
Yet in Tonpa's memory, they already felt heavy enough to have lived with for half a day.
The smell made it worse.
That was the part the anime had never carried.
Not really.
On a screen, blood was color. Shock. Music. Framing.
Here, it had a smell.
Sharp iron over wet earth.
Fresh blood mixing with stagnant water, rotting reeds, and sour sweat.
Even now, long after the corpse had disappeared behind the fog, Tonpa could still taste it at the back of his throat whenever he swallowed.
It stayed there with the mud and the fear.
His shoes dragged through one last stretch of soft ground before the earth finally began to harden underfoot.
Ahead, the fog loosened.
The twisted trees thinned.
The air became slightly less wet, though not enough to feel clean.
Candidates around him lifted their heads a little, like dying men sighting distant fire.
They were close.
Tonpa did not feel relief.
Not yet.
His body had passed exhaustion and entered that strange state where everything became simpler and more miserable at the same time. His legs moved because they had to. His lungs still hurt, though the pain had dulled into repetition. Sweat had dried and returned and dried again in layers across his skin. His shirt clung to him in all the worst places.
He had not collapsed.
That was the nicest thing he could say about his condition.
Leorio was openly breathing through his mouth now. Kurapika remained upright, but even he had begun to show strain in smaller ways—the stiffness in his shoulders, the measured way he placed his feet, the silence that had grown heavier around him.
No one spoke much.
The wetlands had taken that from them.
After Hisoka, after the copied voices, after hearing things move in the fog without ever being sure whether they were beasts or examinees or both, conversation had stopped feeling necessary.
Tonpa kept moving.
One step.
Then another.
He wondered, not for the first time, why this phase had felt so much shorter in the anime.
Then answered himself immediately.
Because no one watching from a bed had to drag Tonpa's body through it.
"How is this still Phase One?" he muttered under his breath. "In the anime, this nonsense was over ages ago."
Leorio glanced sideways at him, too tired to look properly annoyed.
"Did you say something?"
Tonpa kept his eyes forward. "Talking to my suffering."
Leorio almost laughed.
Almost.
That alone made the line worth it.
The path widened abruptly.
The last of the reeds fell away, and what waited beyond the swamp looked so ordinary that Tonpa's first reaction was distrust.
A gate.
Stone.
Open ground.
A large building beyond it, clean and solid in a way that felt unreal after all the mud and fog.
Candidates were already stumbling toward it with the desperate, dazed energy of people who had stopped believing in clean surfaces. Some sped up from instinct alone. Others looked close to collapsing simply because they had allowed themselves to believe the end was near.
Tonpa did neither.
His body no longer had enough left for either choice.
He just kept going.
The gate drew nearer.
With every step, the divide between the swamp behind him and the structure ahead grew sharper. The wetlands had felt alive in the worst possible way. This place looked almost civilized.
Almost.
Satotz crossed the final stretch without slowing.
The examinees followed in a loose, uneven line—some limping, some shaking, some openly gasping now that pride no longer mattered.
Tonpa crossed with the group around him, one of the last.
The ground under his feet turned solid.
He hated how good that felt.
For one dangerous moment, his knees nearly gave.
He caught the weakness just in time and kept himself upright through sheer embarrassment.
Do not collapse at the finish.
Do not collapse at the finish.
He stepped fully into the next testing grounds and stopped only because everyone else had stopped too.
The relief was not clean.
Without movement to occupy him, the damage made itself known all at once.
His thighs trembled.
His lower back ached with a dull, ugly pull.
The skin under his shirt prickled as cooling sweat met open air.
He bent forward slightly and braced his hands on his knees, breathing hard and trying not to sound like an animal dragged half-dead out of a trap.
Around him, the surviving examinees looked little better.
Some had dropped to a crouch.
Others simply stood where they were, wearing the blank, stunned expressions of people who had reached safety but not yet convinced their bodies of it.
Then Satotz spoke.
"This concludes the first phase."
A wave passed through the group.
Not celebration.
Not exactly.
More like a collective loosening of something that had been held too tight for too long.
Tonpa shut his eyes for one second.
He had made it.
With this body.
With this luck.
With Hisoka still breathing somewhere nearby and the story already bending out of shape.
He had made it.
Part of him wanted to laugh.
A larger part wanted to lie flat on the floor and let civilization continue without him.
Instead, he straightened slowly.
That was when he noticed Killua watching him.
The boy stood a short distance away, hands in his pockets, expression loose and unreadable in that irritating way only very dangerous children could manage. He looked far less exhausted than he had any right to.
Of course he did.
His gaze moved over Tonpa's posture, his breathing, the dried sweat, the mud, the effort it was taking just to remain vertical.
Then Killua tilted his head.
"You're still here," he said.
Tonpa blinked at him.
It was such a simple sentence.
That made it worse.
There was no praise in it. No warmth. No real cruelty either.
Just observation sharpened into a test.
Tonpa rubbed the back of his neck. "I noticed."
Killua's mouth twitched, not enough to be called a smile.
"I thought you'd be the type to disappear halfway through."
There it was.
The prod.
Light. Casual. Knife-thin.
Tonpa met his eyes for a moment, then looked away before it could become a challenge.
"Yeah," he said. "So did I."
That got a reaction.
Small, but real.
Killua's stare sharpened a fraction, as if the answer had failed to fit whatever version of Tonpa he had expected.
Good, Tonpa thought tiredly. Let it bother you.
Bad, another part of him corrected immediately. Don't be memorable.
Killua studied him for another second. Then, just as suddenly, he seemed to lose interest—or chose to look as though he had.
"Huh," he said, and turned away.
That was all.
No threat.
No direct suspicion.
But the message had been clear enough.
Killua had noticed.
Wonderful.
Tonpa exhaled slowly through his nose.
One child with instincts too sharp.
One clown with murderous curiosity.
One future chain-user who was already looking at him differently.
This exam was getting crowded.
A heavy voice boomed across the grounds before he could sink further into the thought.
"Well done, candidates!"
Tonpa looked up.
At the front of the testing grounds stood a mountain of a man with broad shoulders and arms like tree trunks. Beside him stood a woman with dark hair and glasses, her expression already carrying the kind of displeasure that suggested humanity had disappointed her long before this moment.
Buhara.
Menchi.
The second phase.
Tonpa's chest sank.
Not because he feared them.
Because he remembered what came next.
Cooking.
Of all things.
He stared at them through the haze of exhaustion and nearly laughed.
After a death run.
After a murderous swamp.
After Hisoka.
Cooking.
"This is a joke," he whispered.
No one answered, because no one needed to.
It certainly looked like one.
That was part of what made the Hunter Exam so cruel. It did not only test strength. It tested whether a person could stay functional while reality kept changing shape beneath their feet.
Menchi stepped forward first, her voice sharp and carrying cleanly across the grounds.
"The second phase of the Hunter Exam is a cooking test."
A murmur broke through the examinees at once.
Tonpa closed his eyes briefly.
Right.
The same reaction.
At least some things still made sense.
Leorio voiced what plenty of people were clearly thinking.
"You've got to be kidding."
Menchi's expression cooled several degrees.
"Do I look like I'm kidding?"
No, Tonpa thought immediately. You look like the reason this phase becomes a disaster.
He kept that part to himself.
Buhara grinned broadly, entirely too cheerful for a giant standing between exhausted candidates and more suffering.
"The first task is simple," he said. "Roast the Great Stamp."
The murmurs changed at once.
Confusion.
Annoyance.
Suspicion.
Tonpa stared at him, then toward the forested ravine beyond the testing grounds.
Ah.
Right.
The giant pigs.
His body, which had only just begun to imagine rest, seemed to understand the bad news before the rest of him did. His legs gave one small, ugly tremor.
He had seen this part before.
The candidates would have to hunt the massive pig-like beasts living in the ravine beyond, then roast them well enough to satisfy Buhara.
Simple by Hunter Exam standards.
A nightmare by Tonpa standards.
Because go hunt a giant charging boar after surviving a death marathon was only simple if one had a better body than his.
Candidates were already reacting around him.
Some with confidence.
Some with excitement.
Some with exactly the kind of stupid underestimation that got people trampled.
Tonpa rubbed a hand down his face.
His arms felt heavier than they should have.
He needed food. Water. Sleep. A miracle.
Instead, he had boars.
Killua passed by him then, hands still in his pockets.
"You look like you're about to die," he said conversationally.
Tonpa gave him a flat look. "That's because I'm considering it."
Killua's mouth twitched.
This time it was definitely amusement.
"You should try after the pigs," he said. "It'd be less embarrassing."
Then he kept walking.
Tonpa watched him go in tired disbelief.
Was that the first real conversation he had ever had with Killua?
And why did it feel like being insulted by a very elegant knife?
He let out a slow breath and looked toward the ravine.
Around him, examinees had already begun moving. Some hurried because they thought speed mattered more than strategy. Others followed because standing still felt too much like admitting fear.
Tonpa stayed where he was for a few seconds longer.
The wind carried a smell from the ravine ahead.
Animal musk.
Dirt.
Heat.
And beneath it, faint smoke from old cooking fires.
He rolled his sore shoulders once and regretted it immediately.
Fine.
If this phase wanted to humiliate him too, it could get in line.
He adjusted his stance, ignored the complaint in his knees, and started forward with the others.
The second phase had begun.
And if the story really was rotting now—
then even the pigs might not behave the way he remembered.