The moment his consciousness entered the virtual space, it was immediately attacked by a Sandworm.
This was indeed Ickshonpe's "special care" for Ging.
But just as he had said, this was a genuine result of death, calculated by the Nen ability system.
Ging naturally understood Ickshonpe's intention. He wanted to use this almost crude method to remind them of the danger level of that land of yellow sand.
Because if such a high level of risk could be simulated in this virtual space based solely on the collected data, one could only imagine the real land of yellow sand probably had a danger level several tiers higher.
And for Ickshonpe, as a resident of cyberspace, to proactively consider this for them was already a rare gesture.
But anyone who was truly committed to exploring the Dark Continent didn't actually need others to remind them of the risks.
They were more aware of the dangers than any bystander.
"Let's go again."
The intense feedback of death still lingered in his consciousness, but Ging unhesitatingly requested to enter again.
He didn't doubt Ickshonpe's skill in constructing virtual worlds in the slightest, but he hadn't even gotten a single second of effective experience just now. How could he possibly say it was the next person's turn with his tail between his legs?
Ickshonpe said no more and directly opened up access to the virtual space once again.
Under everyone's watchful eyes, Ging immediately used his Hatsu on the computer.
The next instant.
His body froze once more, and his consciousness was instantly transferred to the virtual space within cyberspace known as the land of yellow sand.
This time, without Ickshonpe's interference, Ging stood perfectly on the soft sand.
He looked up to see the sky shrouded in a dense haze.
However, the thing obscuring the sunlight was not dark clouds, but a massive amount of sand and dust suspended in the air, refusing to dissipate.
They were like a grayish-yellow canopy, hanging over the desert.
"Tsk..."
Ging quickly averted his gaze, marveling inwardly at Ickshonpe's astonishing level of technical skill.
It was just a pity that such virtual reality could only be perfectly realized within cyberspace.
Although one could also create a Nen space in the real world using Nen, it was far inferior to the virtual space in cyberspace in every aspect.
"If I were to truly set foot here..."
Ging lowered his head and his gaze, pulling his foot out of the sand and gently shaking off the clinging grains. He muttered to himself, "Would the sensation also be like this?"
This was, after all, just a virtually created world.
He shook his head slightly, randomly chose a direction, and began to walk.
With the enhancement of his aura, his travel speed was extremely fast.
Before long, he had walked more than ten kilometers.
Just as he crested a towering sand dune, what unfolded before his eyes was a boundless sea of sand, spreading toward the horizon like satin.
There were no raging gales, no swirling yellow sand.
All was silent, as if time had frozen here, leaving only a reassuring tranquility.
Seeing this scenery, Ging had an impulse to sit down on the spot, and an indescribable sense of being moved welled up in his heart.
Although all of this was virtual, the scenery before him was real.
It was a reality constructed by the giant hornet, flying step by step, observing inch by inch.
However, this tranquility did not last long.
Barely seven or eight seconds after Ging arrived, a Sandworm swept in from the edge of his vision at an astonishing speed.
The gale that accompanied the Sandworm instantly tore the satin-smooth sand to shreds, and clouds of yellow sand were swept high into the air.
Its appearance seemed to trigger some sort of chain reaction.
Soon, another gaseous substance burst forth from the sand, stirring up a fierce wind that swept up countless grains of sand. In a matter of seconds, it condensed into a massive sandy body and then brazenly charged toward the approaching Sandworm.
The two behemoths collided with a deafening roar, instantly kicking up a sandstorm that blotted out the sky.
The sky abruptly darkened, and within the sandstorm, a faint crimson glow flickered.
Gazing at the raging sandstorm in the distance, Ging slowly raised a hand to his chin and thought about how, with Morrow's mastery of Emission, the success rate should be quite high.
After witnessing the entire process of the gaseous substance condensing into a Sandworm, he immediately thought of Morrow's precise and powerful Emission attacks.
In his view, ensuring a hit on the core would not be difficult.
Besides, judging from the results of the Sandworms fighting each other earlier, the defense of that gaseous core didn't seem very strong; even highly concentrated wind pressure could disperse it.
However, no one could say for certain what the situation was like in the real world.
Ging finished his thoughts and turned to walk away from the Sandworm battle.
But he hadn't gone far before the sight of another fierce clash between Sandworms appeared in a different direction.
In fact, no matter which direction he went, it was difficult to avoid the conflicts between the Sandworms.
They seemed to be everywhere, staging battles in this desert with extremely high frequency.
It felt as if they were a series of materialized sandstorms, endlessly raging and churning across this land.
Just like the giant hornet sent to scout earlier, Ging eventually found himself with no path to take.
As the Sandworms fought and collided ceaselessly, the space he could evade was continuously compressed until he was completely swallowed by the gale-swept yellow sand.
A second death.
Ging's consciousness returned to his body. The intense feedback of death washed over him again, but it didn't have much of an effect on him.
Everyone's eyes were focused on him.
Morrow spoke up, "How did it feel?"
"Words are useless. You'll understand once you experience it for yourselves."
Ging smiled faintly.
Afterward, the team members, excluding Morrow, entered the virtual space one by one.
But without exception, they all ended in death, their consciousnesses returning to reality.
Evidently, while the appearance and rampage of the Sandworms might have a certain element of chance in the real world.
In this virtual reality constructed by Ickshonpe, the Sandworms' rampage and the compression of space became an inevitability.
This was precisely him incorporating game-like design into his creation process.
It was just like when a player is clearing a level; only by defeating the boss can they proceed to the next stage.
However, to destroy the core with a precise attack before the gaseous lifeform fully materialized required exceptionally high-level Emission techniques.
This was something only Morrow could do.
Therefore, for the others, entering the virtual space wasn't about clearing the level, but about experiencing the various challenges of that harsh environment in advance.
If the team ultimately chose the route of the Klein Bottle coordinate point, then whether it was constantly evading, or actively or passively confronting the Sandworms head-on, these were all possible scenarios.
But no matter how the situation developed, mastering an effective method to deal with the gaseous lifeforms would undoubtedly grant the team greater initiative.
Morrow walked up to the computer, extended his hands, and used his Hatsu.
Immediately after, the scene before his eyes changed, and the boundless yellow sand became the only view.
Although he had seen this scenery many times through the giant hornet's shared vision ability, personally transferring his consciousness into it was a completely different sensory experience.
This gave Morrow a similar feeling to the one Ging had.
He just didn't linger for too long and headed toward the distance.
Soon, he reached the same sand dune Ging had been to earlier.
He crested it.
He then saw the same scene; a massive Sandworm, like a moving sandstorm, was rapidly approaching.
Morrow didn't slide down the dune, but quietly condensed a large amount of aura in his palm.
Next, that gaseous substance would burst out of the sand.
Although this development was as inevitable as a level boss's appearance, under Ickshonpe's meticulous design, the time and location of the gaseous substance's appearance were randomized each time.
This meant Morrow had to rely on his on-the-spot reaction to accurately and swiftly strike it with the energy condensed in his palm the moment it appeared.
At this moment, Ickshonpe, who was monitoring the progress within the virtual space from behind the scenes, noticed that as Morrow condensed his aura, the computer used to display the data stream status began to fluctuate violently.
"Hmm?"
Ickshonpe was startled. He immediately pulled the keyboard in front of him and his hands began to type furiously.
What's going on? The maximum value I set should be fine... why can't the hard drive and memory process the information properly?
The anomaly that occurred while processing Morrow's consciousness data filled Ickshonpe's heart with intense doubt.
To ensure the stable operation of the virtual space, he had to immediately apply a temporary patch to cope with the system fluctuations caused by Morrow.
With hacking skills unrivaled in the world, Ickshonpe quickly completed the fix.
However, in the process of applying the patch, he was shocked to discover that the cause of the system instability was surprisingly simple and direct.
The maximum aura intensity value he had originally set, meant to benchmark the limits of a human, was completely insufficient to handle Morrow's data.
That was the reason.
"Could it be... he's not human?"
Ickshonpe's eyeballs bounced around erratically in their sockets like marbles.
This was his reaction whenever he was shocked or puzzled.
—--
Within the virtual space.
A large expanse of yellow sand billowed like waves. Amidst the chaos, a gaseous substance suddenly burst forth from the sand and hovered in mid-air.
It was like a distorted heat current, its presence faint amidst the sand-filled sky.
But under the enhanced vision of a Nen user, it had nowhere to hide.
Morrow's gaze instantly locked onto the target.
The aura, pre-compressed in his palm, transformed in a flash into a laser-like beam of light that pierced through the sky, parting even the dust and sand in its path.
The gaseous core had just appeared, the wind just beginning to rise, when it was pierced by this sudden beam of light.
There was no roar of collision, no shockwave of an explosion.
The pierced core dissipated like smoke, silently and without a trace.
And the gale it had stirred up, as if it had suddenly lost its support, fell silent in an instant, and a large amount of yellow sand rained down from the sky.
Not far away.
The approaching Sandworm, upon discovering its competitor had dissipated before it could even form, showed no surprise or hesitation.
It quickly shifted its target to Morrow, as if wanting to completely expel everything but itself from this sandy land.
Morrow noticed the Sandworm's movement immediately but did not choose to evade.
He planned to test whether a full-power, rebounding Deceptive Shooting Star could penetrate that massive sandy body and directly injure the gaseous core within.
"Deceptive Shooting Star."
With a calm expression, Morrow gathered all his aura into his palm.
In an instant, a dazzling, fluorescent green light burst forth from his palm.
In the virtual space control room, the computer monitoring the data stream fluctuated violently again, the amplitude far exceeding the previous one.
Ickshonpe glanced at Morrow on the screen, hurriedly pulled the keyboard in front of him, his eyeballs rotating uncontrollably in their sockets.
I've already raised the game's values, and you're still doubling it?! Wait, this speed is too fast... it's over, I'm not going to make it...
—--
The real world.
The image originally displayed on the computer screen was suddenly covered in static.
Morrow's consciousness instantly returned to his body.
"Hmm?"
He looked down at his hands in confusion.
Deceptive Shooting Star hadn't even begun to rebound, so why was he forcibly kicked out?
The others beside him also wore looks of confusion.
They could see Morrow's actions in the virtual space through the screen.
Although the viewing angle wasn't great, they could clearly see Morrow had just released a Deceptive Shooting Star behind him, and then the screen had plunged into static without any warning.
"Ickshonpe, what happened?"
Ging already had a vague guess. He glanced at Morrow out of the corner of his eye but still directed his question to the computer.
The screen was silent for a moment.
A few seconds later, the static disappeared, and Ickshonpe's cartoon avatar reappeared.
Along with the avatar, his mechanical-sounding voice, tinged with a faint electronic tremor, came from the speakers, "The server loading the game data crashed."
"The server crashed?"
Ging couldn't help but raise an eyebrow, his tone laced with a bit of teasing. "Ickshonpe, something like this can actually happen to you?"
"You'll have to ask that friend of yours. His values are so exaggerated they exceeded the presets. The hard drive and memory I prepared beforehand couldn't handle it at all."
Ickshonpe paused, his voice filled with obvious confusion. "So, is he really human?"
Ging raised a hand and lightly tapped his forehead.
The others, meanwhile, all turned to look at Morrow in unison, their expressions varied.
They pretty much understood.
It was Morrow who had crashed the server.
Fortunately, Ickshonpe had a habit of creating "backup worlds," and he quickly restored the virtual space of the land of yellow sand.
For the other members of the team, the greatest value of this virtual reality was allowing them to adapt to the pressures of the harsh environment in advance.
So even though they had to endure intense death feedback each time, they still chose to repeatedly enter and exit the virtual space for adaptation training.
Ging did not participate again; he still had a large amount of data to review.
Before leaving, he found Morrow and asked, "Have you decided to take this route?"
"Probably."
Morrow hadn't actually made a final decision yet.
Ging nodded at Morrow.
He had a faint feeling that Morrow's team might be setting off soon.
Therefore, his work efficiency had to be further increased. Hopefully, he could find the key information to confirm the coordinate point's location for Morrow's team from that massive amount of data.
—--
Kukuroo Mountain.
Dark clouds roiled, seeming to press down against the mountain's peak.
Suddenly, a powerful and ominous fluctuation of aura pierced through the Zoldyck Family's estate and shot straight into the sky.
In that instant, the thick, gray cloud layer was violently pierced by this power, tearing open a huge gap.
And in a room deep within the estate.
The members of the Zoldyck Family, as well as Tsubone, all looked with undisguised shock at Illumi, who had revealed himself amidst the thick, pitch-black aura.
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