"What… what is this?!"
The elder's lips quivered as his voice rose to a shrill pitch.
"What the hell is going on?!"
His enraged cry echoed through the entire building, reverberating down to the floors below, where the group of Nen-users pursuing Morin and his allies shuddered collectively.
"Hahaha! The old geezer's lost it!"
At the threshold of escape, Uvogin let out a hearty laugh, reveling in the chaos. Nobunaga, standing nearby, smirked but held back from joining in.
But just then, someone stepped into the doorway, causing Nobunaga's expression to harden in an instant.
"It's him!"
His shout was laced with fury.
"So that's why he wasn't around earlier—he must've been out. And now he's back!"
Uvogin's eyes glinted with a deadly gleam as they locked onto the newcomer.
"That guy?" Morin turned his gaze forward, his voice calm. "So he's the one behind all this?"
Standing in the doorway was a dark-skinned, broad-shouldered man with thick eyebrows and sharp eyes. His imposing presence radiated raw hostility. With each breath, faint white puffs of air escaped his nostrils, as though his very body exuded aggression.
"No wonder Uvogin got overpowered before…" Morin mused. The man's skin was a shade darker than Uvogin's, and his aura bristled with unrestrained menace.
The dark-skinned man narrowed his eyes as his gaze swept over them, lingering on Uvogin and Nobunaga. The faint chaos from the hallway seemed irrelevant to him; his entire focus was on the group before him. Without hesitation, Nen energy surged around his body in an oppressive wave.
"You've all signed your death warrants!"
The man sneered, his crimson tongue licking around his lips, a feral grin spreading across his face.
Thud!
With a powerful stomp, he propelled himself forward like a cannonball, aiming straight for them.
"Like hell we're scared of you!"
Uvogin and Nobunaga both roared in defiance, their own Nen flaring up in response. But despite their best efforts, their auras couldn't quite match his.
At the forefront, Morin remained stoic. Without a word, he retrieved another Cuckoo Egg, its faint green glow spreading across the area.
Effect Activated!
The dark-skinned man froze mid-charge, his hostility softening as his expression grew momentarily dazed. But before he could fully process the shift—
"Talk big, huh? Then no need for words."
Morin's expression darkened as he channeled Nen into his right hand.
"Condense."
Using Ko, he concentrated all his aura into a single strike. His Ten reinforced the Nen density around his fist, while Zetsu erased all defensive aura from the rest of his body, leaving him completely vulnerable elsewhere.
It was a high-risk technique, one that pooled every ounce of power into a single attack: the devastating Ken.
"Hah!"
Morin's fist tore through the air with a howling wind and slammed into the man's face.
Thud! Crack!
A sickening crunch echoed as bone shattered. Blood erupted from the dark-skinned man's head as his body crumpled to the ground, lifeless.
Morin flexed his hand, shaking off the blood splattered on his knuckles. He glanced at the corpse, its skull reduced to a grotesque mess of fractured bone and tissue.
"I used my full strength for that punch," Morin muttered, his tone calm. "He managed to wrap his head in Nen at the last second. Otherwise, I'd have blown it clean off."
This was Morin's first kill, yet his heart remained unsettlingly calm. There was no guilt, no hesitation—only a detached sense of finality.
"In this world," he reflected, "everyone else might as well be NPCs."
"The Cuckoo Egg worked pretty well," he continued, wiping his hand clean. "But it burns through energy fast. Its ability to make someone think I'm an ally only works for a sneak attack—it's useless in prolonged combat. And if it's something like the Zoldycks' family bond? Yeah, forget about it."
His musings over the tool's limitations ended as his focus shifted from the body.
"Holy crap, Morin!"
Uvogin's voice brought him back to the moment. He stared at the corpse in shock. "You took that guy out that quickly?"
Nobunaga, too, was dumbstruck, his jaw slightly agape.
Both men had felt the immense pressure of their opponent's aura. They had anticipated a grueling fight, a battle that would push them to their limits. Yet the man who loomed as a formidable foe was now nothing more than a bloodied heap, brought down in an instant.
The respect they held for Morin grew exponentially—not just as a comrade or teacher but as an overwhelming force to be reckoned with.