Chapter 153: Congratulations on Your New Gambling Problem
You had to hand it to the scammers. They had genuinely committed capital. To extract the roughly eight hundred million jenny these two kids were carrying, they put up approximately three point two billion as bait.
The short version: both kids walked into a setup. It started with them stumbling onto a vase that sold for two hundred million, easy, and from that point forward they were already in someone's net. Blinded by the apparent ease of it, Gon and Killua kept buying and selling, watched their combined funds climb all the way up to four billion. Then the other side made their big move: dropped a "four billion jenny" crafted item and sold it to them. The kids, with all their previous successful trades as the foundation, didn't question it for a second. They bought it outright for four billion jenny. And walked away with a piece of junk with an actual market value of eight hundred forty thousand jenny.
In industry terms: they got played.
Their combined starting capital of seven hundred sixty million had run up to four billion, then landed at ten million eight hundred forty thousand jenny. A spectacular wipeout.
After hearing the full sequence, Ross couldn't help feeling a certain genuine respect for the craft.
There was something to be said for staying in your lane. Ross himself was the type who didn't touch stocks, didn't mess with funds, didn't accumulate gold, didn't invest in physical assets, and had bought lottery tickets fewer times than he could count on one hand. He earned a fixed income within the boundaries of what he understood, ran some occasional side work for extra, and put the rest in a bank on fixed-term deposit, and only the four major national banks at that.
So when the four hundred million jenny in Sky Arena prize money had started coming in, nothing in Ross's head had shifted toward making it work harder or generating passive returns. He knew perfectly well that money making money was the smarter choice. The problem was he didn't understand those mechanisms and had no trustworthy representative to hand the sum over to, so the money had simply sat in a Republic of Batopia national bank collecting interest.
Not a bad outcome, given the deposit size.
The kids had lost everything. But they had also, briefly, held four billion jenny.
Envious? Slightly. But not much. They had lost it all, so.
Ross's material desires outside of video games were minimal by any measure. He lived for free between the Sky Arena and the Spirit Wave Style dojo, ate ordinary food, didn't look twice at luxury goods, and at the rate things were going would probably die without spending through the prize money. No complaints.
The TMNT Nen item collecting, however, was putting a visible dent in that stockpile.
Not every seller was like the underground market crowd. Plenty had good eyes and the patience to wait for the right buyer. Some flea market sections ran informal bidding systems: you couldn't just throw money at something, you had to put in a starting offer and wait to see if anyone else came in before the deadline. And there were people in the market specifically watching for high-demand items, and the moment they identified someone like Ross who clearly had to have a specific piece, they would immediately come in and drive the price up.
The whole thing was significantly more complicated and slower than it looked from the outside.
Ross needed all the items on both unlock paths, but that didn't mean he was prepared to extort anyone, kill anyone, or take anything by force. If he reached that point, what would make him different from the Phantom Troupe?
For now: do the maximum that honest money could accomplish. Buy what was buyable. Negotiate when buying wasn't immediately possible. Things being offered for sale couldn't be pure window dressing. There was always a price.
In Ross's view, failing to acquire something just meant not throwing enough money at it. Everything in this world had a price.
"Let me share some good news with you two."
Ross addressed the pair of small disaster children who should probably be enrolling in some kind of financial literacy program.
"If your goal is purely to get into Greed Island, there's actually a path."
He then explained to them about a certain extraordinarily wealthy individual named Battera, who was absolutely determined to acquire all seven existing copies of Greed Island and was simultaneously recruiting professional Hunters to attempt a clear.
Killua took it in with relative composure. Gon's eyes lit up.
Right. There was no need to stare at the opening bid of eight point nine billion, average final sale price exceeding twenty-five billion. Borrow the hen to get the eggs.
Ross himself was actually fairly interested in Greed Island. But since it was in a certain sense a game Ging Freecss had created for Gon, whenever he eventually went in, Ross had decided he would go at a different time than Gon.
"There is one problem, though."
And then Ross immediately took the momentum back down.
"Battera is absolutely serious about getting a clear, which means his screening process isn't casual. At your current level, you wouldn't pass. If I'm reading this right, you two haven't even developed your Hatsu yet, have you?"
The two of them looked at each other, then nodded with some reluctance.
Hatsu, more commonly called a finishing technique. The move that could become the defining signature of a Nen ability user.
Wing's teaching had stayed very foundational. That was fair, as an ordinary Shingen-ryu disciple without the ability to see the future, his instinct was naturally to prioritize solid groundwork and mental conditioning. But the real world's harshness left no room for that kind of patience.
"No matter how solid your aura reserves are, at best you're just a blank-slate super soldier. Developing your own signature technique is what makes you an actual Nen ability user."
That clearly landed. Or perhaps the concept of developing a finishing technique was simply appealing in itself. It was exactly the kind of thing that fired up a child's imagination.
"Killua, there's also one more thing you need to think about ahead of time."
Killua looked slightly puzzled when Ross singled him out. Then he followed Ross's gesture and looked over at Alluka, who was eating a mango shaved ice with complete contentment.
Killua's expression shifted immediately. He already knew what Ross was going to say.
"If you want to bring Alluka and Nanika into the game with you, they'll need at least one appropriate technique of their own too. Or... are you planning to leave them out?"
At Ross's deliberately provocative phrasing, Alluka's spoon stopped in midair. Then the dessert was forgotten entirely. Two enormous eyes looked directly at Killua with the expression of a puppy who had been told it was going to be left behind.
Killua immediately pulled Alluka's head into his arms and started reassuring them, while shooting a look of pure murderous intent at Ross. Ross's expression of complete satisfaction only made Killua's teeth clench harder.
But surprise, if there was any to be had, belonged to Ross. Because he could see it clearly: Alluka already had aura circulating inside them.
Which meant Alluka, who housed Nanika, the Dark Continent entity with the wish-granting ability, inside their body, had completed a Nen awakening and officially become a Nen ability user.
Ross had a feeling about this. The wish-granting ability, now that its effective creator had changed, might be upgrading to a newer model entirely.