Chapter 143: Being the Sub-Landlord Means Being Perpetually Overworked
Dracula was a man defined by love. A devoted husband, through and through.
And when you love someone, you love everything connected to them. By the old rules, a wife was supposed to sever ties with her original family upon marriage, but that was ancient history. This wasn't the fourteenth century. This was the turn of the twentieth, and Neon had shown no reluctance about the Nostrad family whatsoever. So Dracula had naturally extended his protection to cover them too.
A minor application of Castlevania's structural core was enough to encompass the entire Nostrad compound and establish it as a small Castlevania enclave.
Technically speaking, Dracula had deployed it as an extension of the Grand Cemetery's derived zone.
Which also meant Ross, as sub-landlord, had considerably more options here than simply watching through a spectator view.
He still had no clear picture of exactly what was happening over there, so he switched to the overhead view first and took a look. What he saw at the main gate of the Nostrad compound was a fairly intense exchange.
The gunfire was the first thing that registered.
A tall, spindly shadow of a figure with long hair was moving through the air in rapid arcs, throwing something continuously, each throw landing precisely on the black-suited, gun-toting Nostrad guards.
The projectiles hadn't embedded deeply. The round heads were clearly still protruding.
Those round-headed nails were all Ross needed to identify who this was.
Illumi really was inescapable. He had tracked them here this fast. A tracker on Alluka, maybe?
Given how the Zoldyck family treated Alluka, it wasn't out of the question.
As for why Illumi happened to be in range, he had probably been working in a nearby city.
As a Manipulation-type, Illumi could do more than reshape his own body with those needles to an almost inhuman degree. He could also forcibly commandeer other people temporarily for his own use. In ideal conditions, Manipulation types were more difficult to deal with than most.
But Manipulation types also ran into an unavoidable problem when facing other Manipulation types: the question of priority.
Simply put: if a unit had already been placed under one Manipulation-type Nen ability, it became significantly harder for a different Manipulation-type ability to override and seize control of that same unit, at least until the first ability was lifted.
There were always exceptions when the gap in raw power was extreme enough. But as a general rule, it held.
When Dracula extended Castlevania's domain to cover the compound, the guards there, whose lives Neon had never been especially invested in anyway, had essentially been pre-injected with Nen. A Nen that would activate the moment they died: turning them into undead, ghouls, skeletons, zombie soldiers. Monster units in the making.
That Nen was itself a form of Manipulation-type ability.
Which was the core reason why Illumi's needles, which could commandeer an ordinary person with ease, were doing nothing here.
It was also worth noting that this was a limitation of the enclave zone itself. Dracula couldn't simply drag the standard monster units from Castlevania into the enclave on demand.
Though he could transport them there personally, of course. But that would be beneath him.
Besides, he had a date to continue.
With Dracula absent, the guards who would reanimate after death clearly weren't going to be enough to stop Illumi. The moment Illumi realized his needle control wasn't working, he switched strategy without hesitation, went for lethal strikes across the board, and pushed hard toward the main villa complex.
But Ross was here.
The actual landlord was never available when needed. The sub-landlord was always on call. It was a mystery who really cared more about this castle.
Ross had no particular feelings about the Nostrad family either way, no history with them whatsoever, but obstructing Illumi was something he found genuinely interesting.
The moment Ross had chosen to stand behind Killua and pass along critical information, he had already placed himself in opposition to Illumi. They had been temporary teammates during the Hunter Exam, coexisted reasonably enough without getting in each other's way, and Illumi had even left his number afterward. But Ross understood clearly: Illumi's obsession with Killua had twisted him into something that, the moment he learned of Ross's connection to Killua, would turn hostile. Not probably. Certainly.
Add to that this Alluka situation, and while Ross didn't feel like going out of his way to eliminate Illumi, he absolutely wanted to give him something else to focus on.
Something like this.
Ross opened the BOSS configuration list with the controller and scrolled down. He stopped at three names.
A brief consideration. Then a perfectly workable decision.
As the holder of Creator Authority, Ross could do things inside a Castlevania-derived enclave that even Dracula himself couldn't.
Illumi, even while venting, hadn't lost his head entirely. Once inside the villa, he began systematically checking the rooms most likely to hold someone in a position of importance.
Needle control was out, but Zoldyck family interrogation methods were among the most thorough ever developed. A good opportunity to review the curriculum.
But when Illumi kicked open a room that radiated unmistakable princess energy, stuffed toys absolutely everywhere, a man in a tracksuit was already waiting inside. He looked merely somewhat mean rather than threatening at first glance.
"This is my enemy?"
Phinks said it while rotating his arm in steady, unhurried circles.
Yes. Ross had used Creator Authority to pull Phinks, who had died in Castlevania and was now a configurable BOSS unit, and planted him in Neon's room as the area guardian.
The enclave rules were incomplete compared to the main castle, which meant no regular mob spawns and no BOSS room seal at the boundary. Illumi could disengage whenever he chose.
That was exactly what Ross wanted. He needed Illumi to be able to leave.
"Alluka. Where."
Illumi's aura had taken on a color that was close to a malevolent purple-black. Looking at this opponent who finally had some actual capability, he got the question out.
"What are you babbling about. Fight or get out."
Phinks, in some sense reunited with a member of his circle, had zero interest in answering, and genuinely had no idea what Illumi was asking about anyway.
"...Then I'll kill you."
Illumi moved.
Over the entire course of the fight, Ross made exactly one active intervention.
He let the spider tattoo on Phinks's body, preserved perfectly from his living state, "accidentally" come into Illumi's line of sight.
And as Ross had predicted, when Illumi saw the spider tattoo, his pupils contracted slightly.