Roy froze slightly.
That did sound like something Kurapika would say...
The sensitive boy had clearly realized where the real problem lay. Escaping could only bring temporary relief; it couldn't solve the issue at its root.
In other words...
The Kurta clan, with their Scarlet Eyes, were like children carrying gold through a crowded market. It would be strange if no one coveted them. Worse still, in the original story, the clan did not have even a single truly decent powerhouse. And yet the Scarlet Eyes granted them Specialization, allowing them to naturally bring out one hundred percent of all six Nen categories better than other Nen users.
"He's right."
"Running away won't save the Kurta clan..."
Roy casually answered while looking down the mountain path.
On the long path, a small figure poked his head out. Kurapika, with his smooth blond hair and lowered eyes, stepped out from behind a large tree.
Seeing this, Kuraging froze slightly, then seemed to realize something.
"Weren't you sleeping?"
"I had things on my mind. I couldn't sleep..." Kurapika, dark circles under his eyes, carefully glanced at Roy. Gathering his courage, he said, "Young Master Roy, you're someone who understands things. The Kurta clan can't hide forever. One day, someone will find us."
The boy had clearly thought about this problem for a long time. And it wasn't just him. Kuraging, Pairo, and the rest of the Kurta clan all understood this truth.
Only, facing the greed of the outside world, everyone had chosen to bury their heads in the sand and pretend not to see it.
"So, what do you plan to do?"
Roy faintly sensed something and looked calmly at Kurapika.
Kurapika silently came to Kuraging's side and took a deep breath, as if making up his mind. Then he bowed to Roy.
"Please take me in, Young Master."
"I've thought about it. Only if I become strong enough can I protect the Kurta, protect the village, and protect my people!"
"Pika..."
Kuraging was clearly surprised. He obviously had not told her or discussed this with her beforehand.
In other words, this was a decision the boy had made on his own.
[Notice: Detected one "pending follower"... Loyalty +10...]
[Current Loyalty: 50. Still 50 points away from "absolute loyalty."]
[Note: "Pending follower" Kurapika, after witnessing your battle with Silva Zoldyck, yearns for strength and has found his answer for protecting the Kurta clan.]
Whoosh.
A mountain breeze rose, stirring the boy's blond bangs.
At that moment, the mountain path entrance fell silent. Roy watched and listened quietly.
Thump... thump...
Kurapika kept his head lowered, silently waiting. It was only a few seconds, but to him it felt unbearably long, as if each moment stretched into a year.
"Young Master, please forgive Pika's rashness..."
You brat, do you really think the Zoldycks are a place you can enter just because you want to?
Do you know how many people in the butler villa wasted years of their lives and still never entered the real butler ranks?
Kuraging hurriedly bowed and apologized to Roy.
But before she could bend down, two spirals of breeze lifted both of them upright.
Wind Breathing emerged.
Roy casually snapped his fingers and smiled warmly.
"Your brother did nothing wrong. Why apologize?"
To protect one's home and people—good men ought to be like this.
Roy's beautiful silver hair flowed behind him. He looked deeply at Kurapika.
"However, the Zoldycks have their own rules, and even I can't make an exception."
Roy lifted his foot and walked straight past Kurapika's shoulder, leaving the boy with his broad back.
"If you want me to take you in, prove it to me."
"First, fight your way out of the trainee butler ranks."
"Yes, Young Master," Kurapika answered loudly, straightening his back.
Then he watched Roy leave and silently clenched his fists.
The longing and determination shining in his eyes made Kuraging feel, in a daze, as though she were seeing her former self.
Firm. Unwavering. Having gone through the shattering and rebuilding of her worldview, no longer the same as before.
Step... step...
The sound of footsteps gradually faded.
Soon, Roy's back disappeared from the mountain path.
When Kuraging came back to herself, Kurapika seemed to finally remember that he had made this decision on his own without telling her. He lowered his head and apologized.
"Sorry, Sister."
But before Kurapika could lower his head, Kuraging firmly held his smooth little chin up with one hand.
She stared seriously at the stunned Kurapika and said, "Young Master said you did nothing wrong. That means you did nothing wrong."
"Pika, you heard him. If you have the ability, then fight your way out yourself!"
Kurapika nodded solemnly.
The aura naturally rising from above his head immediately turned a firm gold. In the next instant, Roy caught it with a glance through En.
A smile touched the boy's lips. His pace unconsciously quickened. His body blurred, leaving streaks of light in place. In just one second, he approached the mountain gate.
Zebro, who was drinking tea and reading the newspaper in the guard booth, suddenly felt his vision blur. He hurriedly poked his head out, then sprang to his feet and removed his hat in salute.
"Good morning, Young Master."
"Good morning."
Roy smiled and nodded to Zebro. Nearing the Testing Gate, he stopped, turned around, and prepared to head back.
Only this time, Roy adjusted his posture and controlled his aura nodes, opening them along a special "Nen pathway." Then, following the chakra circulation route of Impure World Reincarnation, he began running back toward the mountaintop.
In an instant, Zebro felt the space in front of him go empty.
He could not sense Roy's presence at all.
The bald gatekeeper was shocked and hurriedly looked up. What he saw was the boy's body flowing with two completely different currents of aura, black and white—one full of life, the other heavy with death. Yet the two contradictory forces were somehow harmoniously blending together.
Zebro's mouth opened slightly. The hat slipped silently from his hand, and he forgot to pick it up.
"Young Master, what kind of Nen ability is this now?"
Gulp.
He swallowed and blinked, wanting to see more clearly. But after he closed and opened his eyes, the space before the Testing Gate was already empty. Roy was gone.
Perhaps life was as brief as the blink of an eye, and yet also as long as a flowing stream.
A breeze rose and blew Zebro's hat back into his hand.
At that moment, Roy was practicing Impure World Reincarnation as he returned along the original route, heading toward the mountaintop and also toward the boundary of life and death.
"Senju Tobirama's notes specifically warn that those who have not experienced death must not lightly learn Impure World Reincarnation..."
"At its essence, this requires the caster to have enough understanding of life and death to ensure that when they perform the summoning and call the dead back from the Yellow Springs, they do not lose themselves inside it..."
"But he would never have imagined—"
Roy heard the panel prompt:
[Notice: Impure World Reincarnation has reached beginner level...]
A sharp gleam flashed through his eyes.
"I was already someone who crossed over and reincarnated."
As the two currents of black-white, life-death aura surged, they suddenly rose upward and fused into a milky-white aura that returned to Roy's body. With a thought, he withdrew it, and it vanished.
The boy ran along the mountain path, repeatedly releasing and withdrawing it, continuously verifying and familiarizing himself with Impure World Reincarnation.
Before he knew it, the long road back up the mountain had shrunk beneath his feet into a single point.
In less than three minutes, the Zoldyck family castle arrived.
Roy leaped up from the mountain path, his face neither red nor out of breath. Smiling, he entered the main gate and followed the ancient corridor filled with the scent of years toward the dim little room.
He arrived.
Stopped.
As always, he bowed respectfully toward the room.
"Great-Grandfather..."
Creak.
The rocking chair moved.
On it, the dried-up old man lying leisurely on his side gave a hum and slowly climbed up.
"You've been grinning like an idiot since early morning. Tell me... what's made you this happy?"
As an assassin, one should not show joy or anger.
But the smile at Roy's mouth this time was not as an assassin.
It was as family.
The boy's silver hair swayed in the breeze, its tips glowing with glass-gold light. Through the window, he smiled at Maha.
"There is indeed something happy. It has to do with me, and also with Great-Grandfather."
Roy's expression turned solemn.
"Please prepare early, Great-Grandfather. I'm ready to revive them."
As for who?
Back in the world of Heart's Ear: Sword Listening, the answer had already revealed itself.
Before Maha could even react, several streams of hazy aura wrapped in memory emerged on their own in excitement and took shape.
The one with the braid was Betty Zoldyck.
The one clad in heavy armor was Brook Sell.
The one holding a great axe was Severus.
The one carrying twin swords on his back was Blake Shaw.
These beings, who had fought countless battles and finally followed Maha to a tragic national death, fixed their eyes on Roy the instant they appeared.
A wind of aura brushed past.
Roy felt warmth in his hand as Betty Zoldyck clasped it with both of hers.
"Child, is what you said true?"
Betty Zoldyck's voice was clearly trembling.
Behind her were Brook Sell, Severus, Blake Shaw, and the men and women, old and young whom Roy had once seen in the ruined royal court.
And at the very back stood Maha Zoldyck, silently looking toward him without a word.
"Roy, I think you know what you're saying."
The old man's quiet words were filled with concern and worry, and also with warning.
He seemed to be hoping,
yet also afraid of disappointment,
and even more worried for his great-grandson's safety.
For a moment, his aura became unstable, turning into a complex, mottled gray.
Tick... tick...
The curse on the back of Roy's left hand counted down his life second by second like a clock.
The boy gently stroked the back of his hand. His gaze shifted over Betty Zoldyck, Brook Sell, and the others one by one, then finally settled on Maha.
He said warmly, "I remember Great-Grandfather once said that if the day really came when I had no road left, you would take me and fight our way onto the Dark Continent. Does that still count?"
Maha stood with his hands behind his back.
"Of course."
Roy smiled brightly.
"Then that settles it."
The boy half-jokingly winked at the crowd.
"The more helpers, the greater the odds, right? I'm still counting on Great-Grandmother and all you uncles and elders to stand in front of me and protect me~"
Boom.
Brook Sell, Severus, and the others dropped to their knees like collapsing mountains and jade pillars, bowing deeply.
"Please rest assured, Young Master. I, Brook Sell / I, Severus / I, Blake Shaw / I... am willing to go through fire and water for you, to die ten thousand deaths without regret!"
"Young Master, and me..."
"And me..."
"I will too..."
One hazy figure after another.
One excited shout after another.
They surged outward like a roaring sea.
In the unseen, Kikyo, Tsubone, Netero and Zeno, who were sparring with Silva deep inside Kukuroo Mountain, all raised their eyes toward this place.
Under the gathering of countless gazes, Roy smiled and said nothing more.
He simply reached back toward the garden. A rhinoceros beetle that had fallen beneath a tree, half its body nearly dried out, and an autumn cicada that was still chirping in the branches were caught by a magnetic field and flew straight toward Roy.
One landed in his left hand.
The other in his right.
Then, without any visible movement from the boy, he opened his aura nodes and released two currents of black and white aura. As they intertwined, they slowly linked the dead rhinoceros beetle and the living autumn cicada together.
Then, an astonishing scene unfolded before Maha, Betty, Brook Sell, and also Netero, Zeno, Silva, and the rest of the Zoldycks who had been silently watching through En.
Impure World Reincarnation, open!
No-seal casting.
As the Yellow Springs on the far shore rose and fell, it opened its mouth and spat out a hazy soul-light.
That light flew and flew. Guided by Roy's summoning, it crossed the boundary between life and death and instantly entered the autumn cicada's body, forcibly knocking the cicada's soul into the Yellow Springs to "suffer in its place."
When it opened its eyes again...
for the first time in its insect life, the rhinoceros beetle began anew, using the autumn cicada as its vessel to revive.
Hiss... hiss...
The autumn cicada shed its shell. Right in front of Maha, Betty, Netero, Brook Sell, and the others, it lost its wings, revealing a hard carapace and horns.
It struggled out of the cicada's body.
Beside it lay its former corpse.
This one living, one dead scene struck everyone's nerves with brutal force.
In an instant, the air inside the room fell silent, and even breathing seemed to stop.
"It's alive... it really came back to life..."
The rhinoceros beetle kicked its legs and finally crawled completely out of the cicada.
It turned its head and saw "itself" lying beside it. Clearly, it froze for a moment.
Then, before it could come back to itself, it felt its body lighten. A Nen thread shot over and wrapped around it, dragging it backward through the air and into the hand of a dried-up old man.
"Na... chirp..."
The beetle struggled and cried out.
Maha ignored it completely. He pinched it and studied it carefully from every side.
Beside him, Brook Sell, Severus, and the others watched like tigers. Behind them were countless hazy shadows, packed three layers deep inside and outside, surrounding it so tightly there was no way through.
Right then,
the rhinoceros beetle sprayed a stream of liquid.
It had been so scared it peed.
"This little thing..."
Maha flung it away in disgust.
The rhinoceros beetle whimpered and instantly turned into a tiny black dot on the horizon, only to be swallowed in one bite by Mike, who had appeared from who knew where.
Its second life, from death to resurrection, had not lasted even ten seconds before ending its brief and not especially precious second existence.
But to Maha,
to Betty,
to Brook Sell, Severus, Blake Shaw,
and to the countless dead souls lingering in Maha's memories,
its death weighed heavier than Mount Tai.
Whoosh—