Chapter 49: Killing Monsters Can Actually Drop Loot?
"Huh. I did that?"
Standing at the edge of a crater visibly scorched black from the flame burns, Ross was genuinely impressed with himself.
Kazemaru had been Fireball Spiked clean into the ground, leaving a human-shaped imprint, and was out cold.
Worth noting: All-Style Judo in Nekketsu New Record had thirty throws in total. Fireball Spike, protagonist Kunio's exclusive ultimate, sat in a tier of its own above the rest.
Kazemaru was not actually weak. In terms of raw fighting ability, he ranked in the top four among the thirty-two remaining candidates, behind only Hisoka, Illumi, and Rando.
The Explosive Tracking Shuriken had been primarily a control tool, a technique for threatening opponents and breaking standoffs. His actual killing move was a pure Emission-type Nen blast called Palm Cannon, roughly speaking an upgraded version of Yusuke's Spirit Gun at this stage of the exam.
Too bad he never got to use it.
From the moment Kazemaru's read of Ross barely scratched the surface while Ross's read of Kazemaru was essentially complete from the start, his win probability had unavoidably dropped by a wide margin.
Nen battles were information warfare more often than not. That was just how it worked, unless the raw power gap between two sides was too large to bridge.
And on top of that, Ross had seized the initiative.
Flame Whirlwind Kick, Flame Impact, Fireball Spike: no opening for Kazemaru to counter at any point.
The only reason he was unconscious and not a corpse was that Ross's physical baseline was still fairly poor.
Ross himself was running on fumes, hands and feet trembling slightly.
He had taken Kazemaru down without taking damage, but his aura reserves were nearly empty. The final Fireball Spike had cost him two units, leaving him urgently in need of recovery.
If he ran into someone right now who had given up on their assigned target and was instead collecting three non-target badges for the math, he'd be in real trouble.
Crouching at the edge of the crater, Ross didn't approach carelessly. He picked up a small stone near his feet and tossed it at Kazemaru's bald head.
The stone bounced off. Kazemaru didn't wake up, just twitched involuntarily.
Fine. Still alive. Ross had no intention of finishing him off.
A bald head that shiny, going to waste out here. He just hoped Kazemaru would be sensible enough when he woke up: accept the outcome and leave it at that.
The badge was going in his pocket either way. One point is still a point.
He was just about to search the body when the Little Tyrant console inside him gave a faint shudder, as if it had sensed something on the unconscious Kazemaru.
Ross thought it over. He had only one exploration-type ability. He ejected the Nekketsu New Record cartridge and ran a no-cartridge startup to bring out the Navigation Arrow.
His current aura was nearly gone, but just barely enough for that. The arrow shot out like an eager dog and launched itself at the unconscious Kazemaru, beginning to sniff him with great enthusiasm.
Ross felt a flicker of expectation. Could it be that Kazemaru, like the Man-Faced Ape and Scar-Head before him, was carrying a cartridge derivative?
What actually happened caught him genuinely off guard. The arrow pressed against Kazemaru's bald head, then produced an effect resembling a syringe drawing fluid, a red visual base yielding up some kind of green... aura? being pulled free.
Then the arrow, like a well-fed parrot, swayed contentedly into Ross's hand and ran the effect in reverse.
The green aura was pushed out by the arrow, condensing in Ross's palm through Conjuration into a dozen shuriken.
[Tracking Shuriken - Type I: Grade E Nen tool. Throwable. Consumable. Ammunition: 20/20. Origin: Kamen no Ninja: Akakage. After being thrown, automatically tracks its target until it connects or is destroyed. If there is no current attack target, shuriken will automatically seek out units hostile to the player and attack.]
...Huh?
Ross was genuinely surprised.
Speculating that Kazemaru might carry a cartridge derivative had been idle self-entertainment, nothing more. But the dozen shuriken in his palm were solidly, undeniably real.
The connections assembled themselves almost immediately, linking the shuriken in his hand with Kazemaru's defining characteristics.
Ninja by profession. Uses Explosive Tracking Shuriken. Defeated by Ross. The Navigation Arrow extracted some portion of his aura or life force. Matched it to Kamen no Ninja: Akakage based on his characteristics. Generated the Kamen no Ninja: Akakage-origin Tracking Shuriken through Conjuration, matching the functional purpose.
It was, he had to admit, fairly logical. It didn't even stray far outside the scope of Nen mechanics.
But from another angle: wasn't this just killing monsters and getting loot drops?
Too bad Kazemaru didn't use a ninja blade. Otherwise there might have been a chance of dropping Dragon's Dragon God Sword.
Turning the now fully-materialized shuriken over in his fingers, Ross found himself with more questions about the loot drop mechanic than answers.
Was Kazemaru a special case, or could any enemy trigger it?
Did it require a Nen user, or would an ordinary person work too?
Was simple defeat enough, or were there prerequisite conditions?
If a drop had already been collected once, could the same target be farmed again?
And if defeating someone generated loot drops, what would killing them produce?
His eyes swept across Kazemaru's body. Then Ross shook his head and started looting... searching the body.
He found two badges quickly. A round badge numbered 293, Kazemaru's own, and a square badge numbered 406: meaning Kazemaru's assigned hunting target had been Ross himself.
Two points still needed. At this rate, maybe he wouldn't even need to go after Rando directly.
Then again, if this loot drop hadn't happened, Ross might have been content to collect two points from easier targets. But with this development, Rando was clearly BOSS-tier, which made him distinctly worth pursuing for the drop potential.
The thought surfaced. Ross paused. A peculiar smile crossed his face.
The same one he'd worn when he was trying to take on the Elite Four with a full team of level-one Pokemon.
Rustle.
With a sound that was less a failure to stay hidden and more a deliberate announcement of presence, a figure dropped down not far from Ross. The person hadn't fully landed yet, but the light had: a reflected glint danced across Ross like someone holding a mirror up to direct sunlight.
"Don't misunderstand. You're not my target, and I have no intention of being your enemy."
The arrival spoke as they landed.
It was Hanzou, another gleaming bald head, who had been using his speed and stealth to scout and gather information all across the island.
He and Kazemaru shared a special internal marking between them, so after finishing a periodic reconnaissance circuit he had come to regroup with his senior, only to find he had arrived in time to witness nearly the entire process of his senior going down.
"Uh, thank you for not killing him. I'll take care of my senior from here."
Hanzou, Bald Head Number Two, explained in an urgent rush, anxious that Ross might take him for someone planning to step in and clean up once the fighting was done.
Ross responded by taking a quiet step back, his left hand already gripping the freshly acquired Tracking Shuriken behind him.