Blood stained the ground.
Men and women alike lay scattered, dozens of bodies with heads separated from their necks—everything done in the span of a single thought from the boy.
The long blade wrapped in roaring flames pointed lazily down.
Frank Becky's hand, which had been playing with the "Infinity" pistol, froze. Cigarette clamped between his lips, he narrowed his eyes at Roy. He'd just managed to stabilize his mind enough to keep Roy's En from reading him—yet his mind still wavered, leaking a bit of his inner voice.
What a fast sword.
In the blink of an eye, the kid had wiped out an elite squad it had taken him ages to assemble. Frank Becky hadn't expected that a random "fellow exile" he bumped into would turn out to be such a tough opponent.
He forced himself calm, pulled out a cigarette, and tossed one over.
"Friend, it's all just a misunderstanding."
He blew out a smoke ring, as if he didn't care in the slightest about the corpses at his feet, wearing a strained smile.
"We're all castoffs here. I'm sure you've 'listened' around and figured that out already. Doing what we do isn't easy—we're just trying to get ourselves a status…"
He deliberately glanced at the curse mark on Roy's hand and continued, alluding without saying it outright:
"You know that saying—'no fight, no friendship'? Let's call this a rocky first meeting, yeah? Hell, we might even be good partners. And you…"
Frank Becky paused, then spread both arms toward Roy.
"You don't want to stay marked forever, do you? My men are dead, you're alone out here. Why don't we work together? I just happen to have some connections with Lord Benjamin over in Maple Town. With him backing you, maybe we can get that mark of yours removed…"
Roy said quietly, "I killed your people."
Frank Becky snorted.
"Just a bunch of useless scrubs. Dead is dead. The sun still rises every day, doesn't it?"
The sun was actually on its way down—light slanting through the colossal forest, dusting the ground in scattered flecks of gold.
Frank Becky flicked his cigarette out and let it fall.
"If I, their boss, don't care, why should you?"
Roy didn't answer. It wasn't that he cared…
It was that he felt… sad.
The bodies of Nelson, Katie, Torre, Muto, Olivia and the others lay quietly before him. One by one, translucent silhouettes rose off their corpses—some threw their heads back and roared, some stared blankly, some curled into themselves and wept silently, some looked around in confusion, full of a deep, clinging reluctance to leave this familiar yet distant world. After a short while…
They all placed a hand to their chests and bowed to Roy.
Then they broke up into glittering motes of light—streams of Life Energy that sank into Roy's body.
In that moment, Roy understood.
Every one of these souls had been hunted as prey by the fat man in front of him—the one who founded this "4K Gang"—rounded up as "exiles" and delivered to the Storm Church. Some had been hanged, some sacrificed on altars to "Storm," some had lanterns hung from their guts, some were used as disposable toys by twisted clergy with sick tastes…
Among them, Roy noticed one small girl in particular.
She was still very young, with delicate features. Because she was pretty, Frank Becky had personally called in a "beautician" to dress her up before offering her to that "Lord Benjamin" he trusted so much.
And the very next day, she'd been found in a trash bin.
The girl had no clothes on, dumped naked in the open sunlight, her body run clean through from below to above.
Her skin was mottled blue and purple with bruises, like a discarded doll. Her eyes bulged, staring out at the world with bitter unwillingness—accusing, screaming soundlessly.
"Little Mary," Roy murmured her name.
"Oh, her…" Frank Becky chuckled. "I remember her. She was lucky. To be chosen by Lord Benjamin—that's as good a life as a brat like her could have hoped for."
He noticed the flat, indifferent look Roy was giving him, fished out another cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag.
"No need to look at me like that. For people like us, 'castoffs,' in the eyes of the bigshots we're worth less than a dog. If they play us to death, they play us to death. What can we do about it?"
He spoke as a self-proclaimed "old hand," his tone like a greasy elder giving earnest advice.
"Kid, you're angry. You're furious. I get it, I do."
"But it's because of that anger, that resentment, that we need to face reality, isn't it?"
"Only status—only status—can let us crawl back into God's arms and be treated like people again."
Frank Becky looked at him calmly.
"That's why I founded the 4K Gang."
Roy said nothing.
Frank Becky finished talking and quietly smoked, waiting.
After a while, Roy nodded.
"Alright."
Frank Becky burst out laughing.
"Kid, congrats—you made the right choice."
"Mutual congratulations," Roy replied.
He opened his arms to meet Frank Becky's embrace—and as if he felt his earlier sincerity still wasn't enough, he triggered Arm Regrowth. Two extra arms burst from under his ribs, hands flattening into blades.
Two Snake Strikes shot forward at once, stabbing straight at Frank Becky's back.
Bang, bang, bang—
Several shots rang out. A hail of Nen bullets forced Roy to jump back.
Frank spat out his cigarette.
Gun aimed at Roy, he snarled, "You betrayed me, you little bastard!"
Clang, clang, clang—
The short sword manifested again into Roy's hand, casually shattering the incoming bullets with a few cuts.
He looked at Frank with a calm, distant gaze—as if he were already a corpse.
"Don't make it sound so dramatic. You're the one who betrayed yourself."
Selling out your own people, offering them up to Storm for recognition and status—it was treason in every sense.
Roy slid his fingers along the spine of his blade, thinking of little Mary's bright, pretty face—how she'd been stripped bare and tossed out with the trash, how she'd died in pain, terror, unwillingness, and numb despair.
"Rest easy," he whispered. "I'll avenge you."
He surged forward.
A single Divine Spear, suddenly extending far beyond its normal length, pierced through space itself and drove straight through Frank Becky's chest—pinning him to a towering tree in the distance.
Shoot him dead—Divine Spear.
The hundred-meter-long blade looked small next to the giant trunk, but to Frank Becky, it felt like pure agony.
Not physical agony—though there was that too.
It was his heart that hurt.
"I gave you a chance," a calm voice slipped into Roy's ear. "You're the one who wouldn't take it."
Frank Becky, nailed to the tree, slumped to one side and went limp.
But Roy's brow creased. Alarm surged in his chest.
In an instant, he yanked his short sword back, spun, and slashed behind him.
Boom—boom—boom—
The flying slash he sent back was hammered apart by a string of artillery blasts, shattered mid-air.
As the smoke cleared…
Roy turned and found himself facing a small Frank Becky.
At some point, the real body had circled around behind him. Frank spread his arms and said softly:
"Bunker—deploy."
Rrrrrrr—
The bunker doors opened wide.
A line of miniature tanks rolled out.
They swelled with the wind, crushing shrubs under their treads.
Long barrels swung toward Roy, exhaling thick, oily smoke.
The black hollows of their muzzles looked like they could swallow your gaze whole.
Bunker didn't just let Frank store others—it let him store himself.
That "big" Frank Becky Roy had just killed had only been a "bunker beast," a defensive Nen construct. The real Frank had been hidden inside the mini bunker the whole time—
Quietly watching it all.
Roy understood in an instant. With En, he locked onto Frank now standing atop a mini APC, barking orders.
His feet sank into a patch of marsh. He slipped down into the earth like a fish into water, rushing straight for the rear of the tank line, where Frank Becky stood.
Frank, cigarette at the corner of his mouth, sneered.
He activated his own En, hunting for Roy's position. A moment later, his eyes focused.
He snapped his wrist up and opened fire.
Tat-tat-tat—
Empowered by the divine "sigil" on the gun, the pistol spat bullets like a miniature Gatling. Using En as a radar, he locked onto a point five meters in front of him and poured fire into it—
While his APCs rolled back and the tanks spread out, giving their cannons clear lines of fire.
Shells crashed down.
The earth split and churned. Dirt geysered into the sky.
In that apocalyptic barrage, Roy was buried alive.
One man commanding a private mechanized army—packing war machines into his chest and disgorging them at will. Frank's Bunker was, in terms of automation and integration, arguably even more sophisticated than Botobai's "One-Man Army."
You had to admit—
He was skilled. Skilled enough to build a strong crew and win their loyalty.
But like his father had taught him, when you stripped away special gimmicks and targeted abilities, nen battles ultimately came down to stat lines and to how well the fighters understood shape-shifting and nature-shifting in their own abilities.
And the "Nen cost" of one man with a sword versus one man flying a full armored brigade?
Not even close.
Under Frank Becky's relentless bombardment, Roy never once tried to meet the shells head-on. He stayed gliding underground, using the rock itself to absorb the blasts while periodically using magnetism to steer his short sword—still carrying his Nen—through the dirt as bait, so Frank would keep firing at the wrong place.
A guerrilla war.
Slowly, Frank started gasping for breath.
He realized something was wrong.
This brat was as slippery as an eel. He couldn't pin him down, couldn't land a proper hit. If this dragged on…
The first one to run out of gas would be him.
Grinding his teeth, Frank changed tactics.
He cut off the random shelling, raised one hand to signal, and had his vehicles and tanks halt. He kept only En active, tracking Roy's position, eyes narrowing as he said:
"Bunker—Transform."
Click, click, click—
Tanks and APCs disassembled, reconfigured, and flew together.
In an instant, they combined around Frank Becky at the core, forming a steel Gundam with a spinning rotor on its head.
Boom—
Jets of nen flame roared from its palms and soles.
The rotor whirred, ripping the air apart.
Frank Becky shot up into the sky, climbing higher. After just two seconds of thought, having fully felt how annoying Roy was… he decided on a new strategy—run.
He didn't even bother with a parting threat.
He just took off, tail tucked, as fast as he could go, leaving only the thunder of engines as the mecha shrank to a speck in the distance.
The rumble faded into the sky.
Roy crawled up from the mud, looking up. Beyond the canopy, the sun still hung where it should, evening light turning the horizon red.
He spread his feet, right leg behind, left in front, dropped into a half-kneel and gripped his short sword in reverse in a classic iai ready stance.
Then he slashed upward, as if drawing the blade from an invisible sheath.
Gravity Blade: Rising Dragon.
Nen surged out of him as pure magnetism, coiling upward off the ground into a towering pillar. It twisted into a massive purple dragon that soared to the heavens.
Its antlers were like a deer's; its head like a camel's; eyes like a rabbit's; neck like a snake's; belly like a giant clam's; scales like a fish's; claws like an eagle's; palms like a tiger's; ears like a cow's.
It loosed a sky-shaking roar—
Then lunged, jaws wide, and bit down on the fleeing Gundam in Frank Becky's horrified gaze, hauling it back down toward the earth.
"So heavy—!"
"You bastard, get off me!"
He poured more nen into his engines.
Jets screamed from hands and feet. The rotor howled. Man and machine writhed against the dragon, wrestling in midair as if trying to tear free.
Then a cold flash sparked past.
Roy bent his knees and launched himself from the ground like a cannonball.
He shot past the Gundam, blade wrapped in Ken as he unleashed the fifth form of the Wind Breath he'd learned—Autumn Storm Mountain Wind, cutting upward from below.
Crack—
In the space of a heartbeat, the steel Gundam was carved into a hundred and seventy-four pieces, falling apart in the air.
Tink, tink, tink—
Thousands of metal scraps rained down like a storm, revealing the soft, flabby Frank Becky at the center.
The fat man felt a chill in his chest.
He clutched at it on instinct—
And his chest, cleaved in an X-shaped cross, spurted two crimson arcs.
"Aaaahhh—!"
His shriek ripped through the forest.
He hadn't felt pain in so many years. It almost tore him apart. His collar twisted as Roy yanked him up by the front of his shirt, landing lightly with him in tow and tossing him aside like a sack of garbage.
He hit the ground rolling, groaning and twisting in panic.
Heaven forgives accidents, but not deliberate sin.
Roy watched coldly from the side, expressionless, as the man bled out little by little. From time to time, he added another slash to speed the process along.
No matter how Frank Becky knelt and begged, clutching at his leg and sobbing, Roy didn't move.
"I'd like to spare you," he said quietly. "But Mary won't. And neither will the other exiles you hunted down like animals."
He kicked the man away and crouched down beside him, calmly watching as the light in his eyes went out—listening to his inner voice twist through despair, rage, pain, until it finally dulled into numbness.
At the very end, what remained was a single, hysterical scream:
"Lord Benjamin, save me—!"
Crunch.
Roy's foot came down, crushing the filthy, ugly head like an overripe fruit.
He stood there for a moment in the pool of red and white, until at last the system chimed in his ears:
[Life Energy +57!]
Fifty-seven.
Roy felt a chill.
In two lifetimes, only one other person had produced that much—Merlittorio's little sister, whose hatred had congealed into fifty points when he avenged her.
Frank Becky was now second only to her.
What do you think life is worth?
A gust of wind swept through, making his hanafuda earrings chime softly.
Roy thought of that bamboo grove—of when Yoriichi had first faced Kibutsuji Muzan and asked him, enraged, that same question.
He stared at the writhing souls pulling free of Frank Becky's headless body. But then, suddenly, every alarm in his heart went off at once.
Because the souls that should have been bowing to him in gratitude, returning Life Energy in thanks…
Had all turned their furious gazes somewhere else.
At some point, a new figure had slipped into their ranks—a man in a red robe, his outline blurred.
He was chanting the name of Storm under his breath.
As his hood tilted, a sliver of his face was revealed—the very same face Roy had seen inside Frank Becky's mind when he read him with En.
Benjamin.
"By Storm above," the man intoned, voice echoing in the quiet woods, "blasphemer—
Must die."
~~~
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