Chapter 26: Cartridge Recovery Conditions and the Advanced Challenge Vow
Light flooded the room again. When it cleared, everyone found themselves back in the original five-versus-five platform setup.
Of the two people who had been competing in the center, one would not be getting up again.
The wounds on Bendot's body and the blood that hadn't fully dried yet confirmed it: everything that had just happened was real.
But Lippo — who could feel, with complete clarity, that he had never moved an inch from his monitoring room and had only entered some kind of specialized observation mode — was finding his expression harder and harder to hold neutral.
Not because Ross had killed Bendot during the test. Because despite Bendot's death, the floating roulette disk hovering over the arena had not disappeared.
Nen was the energy of life. When the source died, the products of a Nen ability — with the exception of purely emitted energy projectiles — typically dissolved on their own. That was the rule.
There were exceptions. When someone died carrying intense unresolved resentment, the Nen they left behind not only failed to disappear but could grow stronger, continuing to execute whatever obsession the user had been carrying at the moment of death. That was what was generally meant by post-mortem Nen.
By standard reasoning, a disk that hadn't dissolved with its creator should belong to that category. But what confused Lippo was that neither the dead man on the floor nor the disk above the arena was putting out anything like the quality of energy he associated with post-mortem Nen. It felt more like...
Like the disk had been built to exist independently from the start.
Under normal procedure, Lippo's next step should have been contacting the Association. The airship hadn't gone far — there was still time to get them back.
But when his eyes moved from Bendot's body to Ross, he paused.
There was nothing negative in Ross's expression. Quite the opposite: the look Ross was directing at the disk was burning.
Ross activated the navigation arrow. It didn't need any direction from him — the moment it appeared, it moved straight for the disk like an animal that had just caught a scent, circling and pressing against it, the familiar GOGOGO flashing urgently around the point of contact.
This time, though, was different from when he had pulled the cartridge out of the Man-Faced Ape's body. The GO on the arrow faded. What replaced it were two lines of text that everyone in the room could see — though not everyone could immediately read them.
You have discovered a brand new game cartridge derivative Nen tool — Nekketsu New Record: Competition Roulette.
Current status: Original host "Bendot" has died, but this item is strongly bound to the "Majority Rules path" event and will not disappear before the bouts are completed.
Recovery Condition: Win a cumulative total of 3 matches in this room's Majority Rules combat. (1/3)
When the characters appeared, Illumi — standing quietly toward the back of the candidate group, as he had been since the beginning — produced a chain of his mechanical clicking sounds.
Not all of it, but a portion. He had been able to read some of the text, specifically the four characters making up "recovery condition." The reason: his grandfather, Zeno Zoldyck, had a personal fondness for Chinese characters as embroidery on his work clothing, and the exposure over the years had given Illumi an incidental reading ability for a limited range of them.
The half-understanding, however, had also produced a misreading.
In Illumi's internal framework, a Nen ability construct that continued operating after its creator's death without dissolving was something extremely close to post-mortem Nen. Badge 406's ability had apparently generated text noting the recovery condition for this post-mortem Nen construct. The logical chain from there was short, and it led to one conclusion:
Badge 406 was possibly a Nen exorcist.
Whether that was accurate remained to be seen. But Ross's standing in Illumi's estimation had shifted — from "disposable stranger, eliminate if inconvenient" to "Nen user who might have practical value for future work."
Lippo, for his part, was in the middle of packing crackers into his mouth between observations and could have read most of the text himself. Unfortunately, the navigation arrow was not a tangible object the way the console or the roulette disk were — ordinary prison surveillance cameras couldn't capture it or the text it generated. He missed it.
What none of them knew was that after the publicly visible text finished appearing, a second message surfaced behind the arrow that only Ross could see.
Advanced Challenge Vow: Win all 5 matches in total. Upon fulfilling this vow, this item will exist in dual form as both a Nen tool and a game cartridge. Your cartridge collection slot +1. Cartridge collection slots can store cartridge-derivative Nen tools.
Ross had barely finished reading it before the Competition Roulette began spinning on its own.
Worth noting: the section corresponding to the 400-Meter Combat Hurdles had gone dark. The wheel would only select from the remaining events.
"Hey! Warden! We're not seriously supposed to keep doing whatever this thing tells us, are we?"
One of the convict-examiners pulled the cloth covering off his head and shouted at the surveillance feed.
Lippo didn't answer immediately. He was watching Ross — whose smile had reached the back of his head — and thinking it through.
The roulette wasn't giving off the malevolent quality he associated with post-mortem Nen in his experience, but it was still a Nen ability remnant and couldn't be left unattended. And since Badge 406 had demonstrated, in the middle of an actual bout, more familiarity with this ability's rules than its creator had, the logic was straightforward: let him handle it, whatever the reason.
As for the commissioned convict-examiners — they were all people who had more than earned what was coming to them. Having them spent in a legally sanctioned Hunter Exam context was an efficient use of existing resources and would take a certain amount of pressure off his roster. Practically speaking, this was fine.
He moved closer to the microphone and gave his answer.
"Yes. Continue conducting the bouts according to the wheel's results."
Before the convicts could object, he added the only thing that would prevent them from objecting.
"I'll authorize double sentence reduction for each bout conducted under this wheel."
That was the end of the discussion. They had signed up as commissioned examiners for the sentence reduction in the first place. Double reduction was not an offer you declined.
The Competition Roulette's pointer slowed. Stopped.
The next competition subject had been selected.
Competition Subject: High-Rise Pole Vault.