Chapter 109: Eye That Shatters Delusion × Pariston "Dies"
Thunder cracked out of a clear sky.
A roar far greater than the elephant's trumpeting blasted through every heart, a wave of sound fierce enough to make souls tremble.
It skimmed the seabirds, and they dropped from the sky. It tore through the sea wind as it passed. The sound wasn't loud, but it tugged at people's nerves and drew them toward panic. Roy watched Pariston change before his eyes and had to admit it: the man's talent was as rare as any among the Zodiacs to come—no less than Ging's or Botobai's.
The more real the imagination behind Conjuration, the stronger the conjured thing becomes.
In the year he first awakened Nen, Pariston began conjuring Knight and Elephant units modeled on Yurobian Black‑and‑White Chess. They had real‑world counterparts, so he could anchor his visualization in reality. When his imagination faltered, he turned to the actual thing —a field trip to the zoo, for example, always sharpened the details he needed to recreate them accurately.
But a dragon, especially the Silver Dragon from that chess, was not only colossal but nearly impossible to find in reality. Most families would never imagine such a monster existed in this world at all.
So Pariston could only rely on his own imagining, add to it what he found in records, go to museums to inspect ancient fossils of two-winged lizards—scattered traces of draconic blood—and build, in his mind, what the Silver Dragon he imagined ought to look like. Even so, with his current manifest capacity, he still could not conjure a complete Silver Dragon. He could only use himself as the base, take on a dragon's form, and construct a false dragon: Silver Dragon Possession.
A great wind rose and showed signs of turning into a gale. Centered on Pariston, Nen surged and shaped into a phantasmal dragon-like being: a horse's head, a lion's body, a lizard's tail, crocodile scales, bat-like wings spread across its back. It roared to the sky.
Dragon's might unfurled.
This roar dwarfed the last. Pariston beat his wings and took to the sky. Waves radiated out from him.
Thump, thump, thump. Rika, the boy with a bow, the snake handler, the dagger man, First Mate Gus—crew and candidates alike—saw their vision go dark, their brains crash, then dropped like dumplings into a pot. One after another, every last one collapsed.
"Hehe… Little Hill's Silver Dragon."
How long had it been? It had been two to three years since Clark had seen him take this form. He raised Ten again and traded another heavy punch with Illumi. The fat on his body sported several new, sharp cuts—the serpent arts' handiwork, all of them.
Illumi kept a thread of attention on the field and saw the dragon, heard its might, and noticed the strange mass fainting on deck. In his mind surfaced something Grandpa Zeno once said: their family also kept a dragon. When Illumi was older, he would take him to see it.
He had not expected to meet one here first. His gaze dropped and fixed on Roy.
Big brother's face was serene. He showed no expression. The wind tossed his bangs as he looked up into the sky. The Silver Dragon beat its wings, as if it meant to blot out the last of the sunlight.
Illumi immediately felt displeased. He stamped and shot into the air. As Roy climbed, the cane-sword in his hand began to freckle with red, the spots joining into a line, then flooding across the blade. A searing crimson light glittered there. One glance stung the eyes, as if burned.
"Young Master…" Gotoh's hands had become machine guns as he chased Goh under a hail of shots. The coins in his pouch were long gone; now it was pure Nen rounds. He remembered his own eyes being injured. The setting sun should have been sinking, and yet it looked as if it had reappeared in the young master's pupils, blazing free.
"The sky is a dragon's home ground. You shouldn't have come up here." Pariston spotted Roy's charge and, clad in Silver Dragon Possession, stooped out of the heights. With the heavens as his arena, a claw scythed down—fast, far faster than any charging giant—and in the next blink it was on Roy.
The rush did not slow. There was nowhere to plant a stance in midair. If he could not dodge, he would be smashed into paste by that claw, the same way Donovan had been pulped by Clark's palm. Fleeing for his life from the Nen rounds, Goh picked his moment to needle Gotoh's nerves.
"Stop struggling in vain. I admit your young master is strong, but before the Silver Dragon…"
"To this day, I have never seen anyone survive Pariston's strike. Even if he has only shown it once."
Is that so?
Gotoh said nothing. His ten fingers flashed, and his fire only quickened. He did not look at Roy. He kept his focus on reading Goh's movements. In his heart, he believed in the young master. He would never allow a second showing.
The Sun's True Intent: Eye That Shatters Delusion.
Closer. Two suns climbed into his eyes.
Roy's pupils flared. The world opened before him as bare lines.
The moaning gale halted in that instant. Noise vanished. In the boy's vision, only the claw slowed to infinity, and its master, Pariston. Roy drew the cane-sword without hurry and aimed not at the dragon's heart, but at the blond youth's.
Pariston's clear eyes shifted, from confidence at first, to surprise, to fear, to panic. Then he found he could not move at all, and could only watch Roy slide the blade into his chest, break through his ribcage, and thrust out between his shoulder blades. At last, his gaze went void of all color. "Cough… cough… so that's your true Nen ability?"
His heart did not hurt at all. He felt no sensation—only a little cool, then a little hot. The cane-sword came free. Transparent World for 0.1 seconds ended.
Silver Dragon Possession fell away and revealed Pariston's true body.
He touched his chest, looked up at Roy again, and plummeted like a kite with a cut string.
Thud. The deck buckled into a shallow crater.
After a brief silence, came two frantic splashes.
"We lost… Little Hill actually lost… To hell with you, Zoldycks, I'm not playing along anymore!" Clark barely avoided another Nen-coated hand blade from Illumi. Horrified, he lost all will to fight, spun, and dove overboard.
Goh was even faster.
The thin bodyguard could not believe what had just happened, but he could not deny the blood-soaked reality either. The instant Pariston's heart was pierced, he jumped without a second thought and swam for his life, and behind him poured a hail of Nen rounds from Gotoh.
"Too slow." Roy stepped down on the clear wind and dropped to the deck. Without so much as a glance, he flicked two more cuts.
The great slashes outran the men themselves, grazed past Illumi and Gotoh as if guided, and plunged into the sea, chasing Clark and Goh. In less than a breath, two screams rose, and a wash of blood stained the surface.