"Hu…"
As the pain ebbed and strength surged, Roy let out a slow breath, feeling power rising from deep within his body like an endless tide. He laced his fingers together and stretched upward.
Crack-crack-crack…
Every joint—neck, elbows, knees, ankles—popped like a handful of roasting beans. His whole body felt impossibly light and clear. He took a quick shower, then sat at the table and opened West Continent Notes just as Gotoh pushed in the food cart.
Roy glanced up at him.
[Follower: Gotoh]
[Physique: 217 → 220]
[Manifest Nen: D+ (9,754/10,000) → C– (77/100,000)]
[Potential Nen: C– (1,745/100,000 → 2,250/100,000)]
Ever since he'd started learning the Breathing technique, the physical bottleneck that had held Gotoh back for years had finally begun to loosen. Clearly, he'd been working hard these last few days.
Roy smiled. "Got it fully under control already?"
Gotoh pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose and shook his head. "I still can't maintain Total Concentration: Constant."
"No rush," Roy said, taking the knife and fork from him and cutting off a piece of steak. "Have someone prepare a few gourds for you. Blow into them whenever you have free time. It'll help you extend your 'focus' time."
The Breathing arts were built on heart and lungs. Stronger lungs drove hotter blood, faster heartbeats, deeper potential. In the original story, Tanjiro and Zenitsu had mastered Total Concentration: Constant using exactly that "gourd training" at the Butterfly Estate.
"Yes, sir." Gotoh stored that away carefully.
He served Roy dinner, standing quietly to the side. Soon the meal was over; the young butler cleared the dishes and was about to leave with the cart when Roy stopped him.
Roy opened his right hand. By fusing imagination with nen, he conjured the gun engraved with the word "Infinity"—a nen weapon that meant "endless fire"—and tossed it to Gotoh.
Gotoh caught it in both hands. The moment he felt it, he could tell there was something different about this pistol—he recognized at once that it was a nen tool bearing a divine character.
"Endless fire, nen that doesn't run dry, bullets that don't run out. This gun also amplifies a Transmitter's firepower. It's a rare and very good weapon."
Roy didn't look up from West Continent Notes as he said it, pages stopped on the chapter about "Faith in Practice."
Gotoh couldn't stop running his fingers over the gun. He opened his mouth to speak, but when he glanced over and saw Roy already immersed in reading, he simply pressed the pistol to his chest like a treasure, bowed deeply, and left with the cart.
I'll make proper use of it, he promised silently as he closed the door.
"Shff… shff…"
The curtains fluttered in the night breeze, lifting a corner and revealing dense darkness outside.
A single warm light burned in the room. The only sound was the faint whisper of pages turning as Roy read.
He cross-checked Zigg's speculation on "Faith and Nen" with his own experience on the Dark Continent—Frank Becky, and that Storm follower, Benjamin.
Benjamin, with a casual gesture, could call thunder down and use nen to channel nature, boosting the strength of lightning. How much faith had he swallowed? How many people's nen had he siphoned?
Perhaps those exiles—little Mary and all the other victims that Frank's 4K gang had dragged in and offered to the Storm Church—hadn't just been used as toys. Maybe their minds had already been eroded by nature's backlash, sliding toward "contamination" and "disaster," until these so-called clergy could no longer distinguish pleasure from cruelty.
On page 27, Roy found a line written in clear hand:
"The deeper the faith, the more extreme the person. Upward, they become saints who bless the land. Downward, they become monsters who ruin cities."
Benjamin, clearly, belonged to the latter.
Roy thought it over.
He didn't know what doctrine the being behind Storm had originally written. But he understood now: the Sun wasn't purely "good" either.
Gentle, it nurtured all things. Harsh, it scorched fields and baked crops to death. Two faces of one reality. No matter how you framed it, any real thing came with inherent contradictions.
"So, in the end, it still depends on people—on how it's guided…"
Zigg's writing cut off there.
He sounded like he'd said everything and nothing at all. Maybe, Roy thought, even Grandpa Zigg had no concrete answer—no clear system for how to do this.
Roy's thoughts churned.
He shut the book and closed his eyes, tapping two fingers lightly on the table. A moment later, his gaze sharpened.
The road was right there ahead of him. He'd already taken the first step. There was no way he was turning back now.
He'd spread the faith in Demon Slayer's world. He'd spread it on the Dark Continent. And he'd spread it here, on this lake-locked island people called home.
Roy pushed his chair back and walked to the window. Outside, the stars were faint, the sky a spill of ink. In his mind, he sketched the rough outline of the "prison isle" encircled by the Lake of Mobius.
At last, his eyes narrowed, and he picked a point.
The place the world treated as a dumping ground—
Meteor City.
We accept everything. Likewise, no one takes anything from us.
A face flickered through his memory—hair slicked back in a neat suit style but often worn loose when he prowled for women or information, a cross tattoo on his forehead, blue earrings, long black coat with an inverted cross on the back. Calm eyes like a deep pool, thoughts impossible to read.
Chrollo Lucilfer.
Roy rested his chin on his hand.
He'd bring a little "light" and "warmth" to that city that had existed—and suffered—for fifteen hundred years.
The wind stirred the hanafuda earrings at his ears. Roy clasped his hands behind his back and gazed southward through the night.
Across from Mimbo Republic, beyond the sea, in the far north of the Yorbian continent—the place where Meteor City lay—
A little "drama" was playing out.
"First! We absolutely must not act on impulse!"
"Second! We absolutely must not let a single villain slip away!"
"Third! We absolutely must make our verdicts cool as hell!"
"Everyone~ good afternoon! We are… the Clean-Up Squad!"
Inside a church on the west side of Meteor City, a boy with a bowl cut stood on a makeshift stage, gripping a microphone and doing his best impression of a TV host.
The "audience" roared with laughter and applause, their cheers filling the once-solemn nave.
He had glossy black hair and was enthusiastically dubbing the hero voices for a made-up show called Clean-Up Squad.
As the "curtain" pulled back, he stepped aside to let "Pink Ranger" make her dramatic entrance. A pink-haired girl stepped forward.
Behind the stage, a half-grown boy in a tiger-skin skirt and nothing on his upper body bickered with a "wandering swordsman" whose crooked wooden sword hung at his side.
The host turned anxiously to the girl with twin golden pigtails.
"Sarasa… I'm counting on you…"
The girl, tiny but full of force, nodded solemnly and strode between them. She slapped a hand onto each of their arms.
"Hey—stop fighting."
Uvogin and Nobunaga both snorted and looked away at the same time.
Watching from the side, the black-haired boy—Chrollo—let out a quiet sigh of relief.
In the end, only Sarasa can keep those two in line, he thought.
~~~
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