Chapter 51: The Human Rubbernecker Attribute
The prouder the person, the more accustomed to things going their way, the harder they fell when someone refused to take them seriously. Rando was exactly that type.
And Yusuke wasn't just talking. If you looked at the web-like scarring on Rando's chest right now, you would find new damage hidden inside it: the direct result of a Spirit Gun connecting during the transformation.
Without Yusuke's pitying gaze, that Spirit Gun alone would have landed as a significant blow.
Based on Rando's experience hunting ninety-nine experts, not all of them had qualified to push him into his demon form. But every time he reverted, the opponent would stand there frozen, stunned as if by unspoken convention, giving him all the time he needed to shed his false skin.
And now here was someone who completely ignored the script, and had actually dealt real damage. For Rando, this was unprecedented.
The combination of physical and psychological damage made Rando flag Yusuke as his primary kill target, and at this point it had nothing to do with being the hundredth technique acquisition. He just wanted Yusuke dead.
Rando opened his mouth. Silk threads began forming rapidly.
And then the scene that blindsided him:
Yusuke, catching the shift in Rando's posture, clicked his tongue. And ran.
"Damn! Exactly what Ross said, word for word! He really is a humanoid spider!"
Interest is the best teacher, as always. Much of Ross's thorough briefing had been filtered out by Yusuke's ears on the way in, but he remembered Rando's ability characteristics clearly, including the demon silk threads produced by the special glands in Rando's body, secreted and fused with demon aura.
From a franchise lineage standpoint, Rando's demon silk threads were very likely the prototype for Hisoka's Bungee Gum: binding, tough, elastic, constricting. Once someone was wrapped in them, escaping on their own was nearly impossible, and even if they managed it, the aura cost was severe.
But alongside all those excellent properties came unavoidable weaknesses.
Slow formation time. Short range.
The threads needed to be secreted to a sufficient volume before they became truly tough silk bundles, and reaching that volume took time. Wrapping a target required either hard-controlling them or waiting for them to stand there in a daze.
Ross's advice to Yusuke and Kuwabara at the time: if you see the opponent spitting threads, turn and run immediately. A spider can only catch prey that wanders into its web. If the prey sees the web being built and runs before it's finished, the spider can do nothing.
Watching Yusuke bolt into the forest without any hesitation, Rando was on the verge of breaking down for the third time.
But amid the rage, a thought surfaced.
Who knew him this well? Well enough to know every property of the demon silk threads?
Those ninety-nine people: he had not left a single one alive. How did the other party know?
Rando could not work it out at all. But his body had already given chase before his brain caught up.
From both the hunting angle and the information-leak angle, he absolutely could not let that kid stay alive...
Wait. That kid had just said someone's name. Which meant his information had come from someone else.
In that case, he could not kill him outright. He had to torture the location of the information source out of him first, then kill him.
Irritation written too clearly across his face, Rando accelerated through a brute-force aura burst, the crudest possible method. Apparently none of the ninety-nine techniques in his possession were anything resembling a movement support ability.
As a result, the powerful demon aura in his body, fundamentally different from human Nen, began radiating outward in all directions, which was the equivalent of actively broadcasting his location to every living thing in the area.
This dangerous, raw life energy had an extraordinary effect on ordinary creatures.
Click click click.
Gon's teeth were chattering uncontrollably, his entire body shaking in a way he could not stop, like a small herbivore that had just caught the scent of a large predator. A fear rising directly from his DNA wrapped itself around the kid from head to toe.
After landing on the island, Gon had immediately tracked Hisoka by scent and entered a tailing state, planning to catch him off guard and steal his badge.
The kid who grew up on Whale Island had sensory awareness close to a wild animal's, and it was precisely that awareness which let him pick up Rando's ominous demon aura.
Compared to human Nen, demon aura seemed more aggressive, broader in its spread, and more deeply wrong.
The kid had never been tested like this. He was forcing himself through the fear, body trembling, peering through gaps in the undergrowth toward his target. Predictably, Hisoka, who had been resting with his back against a tree, had slowly risen to his feet. His body was hunched forward like a prawn dragged onto dry land, but his head had twisted toward the source of the demon aura in an angle and posture that had no business being possible.
Then Hisoka moved. One step. Two steps. Walking to running. Face lit with a greed that went past anything normal. Closing fast toward the source.
At the same moment, Gon drove his thumbnail hard into his own thigh to snap himself back. He gripped his instincts, ground his teeth, spent a good while reinforcing his nerve, then forced himself against his body's screaming terror and followed.
In another direction, Killua had also picked up the aggressively radiating demon aura. His reaction was even stronger than Gon's.
Killua had folded his arms around himself. He had not started shaking the way Gon did, but he was nearly instinctively stepping backward one pace at a time, his body making its own judgment to retreat from the danger.
Or rather: the needle his brother Illumi had inserted into his forehead was making that judgment for him.
If even perceptive ordinary people could pick up demon aura, Nen-using candidates could detect it far more clearly.
From a pure self-preservation standpoint, moving away from the source of that ominous energy was the rational choice. But how many rational people ever become Nen users?
This was only the first day. Everyone was running at full strength, and when you have energy to spare, you have curiosity to spare too. This was precisely when the rubbernecker attribute embedded in human beings decided to make itself known. If there was a commotion somewhere, people had to be there for it.
And so the Nen users scattered across different parts of the island began, almost without coordinating, moving toward the source of the demon aura.