Chapter 2: Water Divination
Hearing the howls from all directions, the fur on the wolf Kai controlled stood straight up.
Are you kidding me? Does the world just have it out for me?
Kai scrambled to pull a black suit jacket off a nearby corpse. He managed to roll onto the back of his controlled wolf and draped the oversized jacket over his small body.
He clung tightly to the wolf's fur, burying his head under the jacket. Blocking out his own vision, he focused entirely on the wolf's senses.
"Kai-Wolf" took off, its four legs a blur. It bounded over the piles of bodies, a black arrow parting the tall, dense grass.
Swish!
The wolf's shadow darted through the dim light, leaping out of the tall grass—only to skid to a halt, its green-glowing eyes narrowing.
Kai-Wolf landed hard. It let out a low growl, slowing its pace. Kai, who was being bounced around on its back, saw through his wolf's eyes what it was seeing.
A new pack of wolves was flanking them from the left and right.
Pairs of green eyes glowed in the dusk like approaching ghost-lights. Damn it all, they're just wild dogs, but they're using flanking tactics?
Kai-Wolf growled, slowly backing up as the tense, murderous atmosphere of the closing pack intensified.
I have to stall for time…
If his main body could just recover a little more energy, he might be able to use that strange pentagram ability again.
If he could control a few more wolves, he might have a chance to live.
Kai was truly exhausted. He'd been inexplicably thrown into this world as a scrawny little kid. Fine. But to wake up in a mass grave and immediately be hunted to this extent by a pack of wolves? What kind of starting-zone hell was this? Couldn't he just get a second to breathe? He didn't want to die without even knowing what was going on.
At that moment, the wolves' patience ran out. Howling, they lunged at the boy and his single wolf.
Kai took a deep breath and ordered Kai-Wolf to buck.
The wolf's hind legs kicked, tossing Kai's small body from its back and into the relative safety of the tall grass.
Kai-Wolf itself let out a piercing shriek and charged, slamming into the attacking pack.
In an instant, Kai felt it all—countless claws raking its body, dozens of sharp teeth tearing, biting, and gouging at its legs, its head, its back...
Projecting his mind into the wolf meant feeling all the pain of being torn apart. Kai, lying at the edge of the tall grass, quickly withdrew his consciousness. He couldn't focus on the fight. He was numb with exhaustion. He pulled a soft hair from his head. It might not work, but I can't just close my eyes and let these mutts eat me. I have to at least try.
But suddenly, the sounds of tearing and fighting stopped. A dead silence fell, broken only by uneasy growls. The wolves sounded like they had run into something dangerous.
Kai forced himself to turn over, carefully pushing aside the grass. His eyes went wide.
The wolf he had been controlling was lying in a bloody heap on the ground. Around it, the pack was slowly backing away, all staring at the same spot.
Opposite them stood the beast from the high slope.
The faint moonlight made the approaching creature look almost divine.
Up close, he could finally see it. The beast was a massive tiger, over a meter tall. Its fur, which should have been one color, was glowing in the pale moonlight with a mesmerizing, otherworldly blue-green light, like polished jade. The "King" (王) character on its forehead was glowing with the same brilliant, jade-like light.
"Roooar..." The tiger, its patterns pulsing with strange light, let out a low growl at the pack.
With every step it took, the wolves scattered back in fear. When the distance was great enough, they turned and fled in every direction.
It's just one tiger! There are like twenty of you! What are you afraid of?!
Kai was furious at their cowardice. He wished he could have taken control of those wolves and forced them to swarm the tiger. At least they could have weakened each other!
Then he could have made a run for it.
The tiger turned and looked straight at him.
Its eyes glittered like gemstones, reflecting the literally glowing "King" pattern on its forehead. It was beautiful... of course, it would be even more perfect if it would stop walking toward him.
The tiger's massive, furry—and terrifying—head slowly leaned in. The jade-like glow from its forehead reflected in Kai's pupils, getting closer... and closer...
Finally, the tiger turned its head and gently nuzzled him.
Kai froze. This giant, glowing tiger... was it being friendly?
Do I have some kind of 'protagonist's halo'? he wondered. Baffled, but figuring he had nothing to lose, Kai let his pounding heart settle.
After a moment, the tiger extended its furry tail, wrapped it gently around Kai's small body, and lifted him onto its broad, strong back.
"The clothes," Kai mumbled instinctively.
The radiant tiger leaned down, snagged the discarded suit jacket with its teeth, and turned its head. Kai stared, then reached out and took the jacket, pulling his skinny arms through the sleeves.
He looked at his blood-stained fingers, hesitating. Should he try to draw a pentagram on the tiger's back?
A cold night breeze blew past. Kai clutched the jacket tighter and abandoned the idea.
What if the ability fails and just pisses off my new tiger bro? This weird new friendship would turn sour, and the consequences would be... less than optimistic.
Sitting up on the tiger's back, Kai looked back at the field of tall grass, a weird blotch on the landscape. He knew it was full of corpses. This was not a place to hang around.
Time to bounce.
Kai gently patted the tiger's back and pointed in the direction where the wind seemed to be carrying the sound of water.
The radiant tiger began to walk, unhurried. Along the way, Kai spotted a shadow moving furtively. It was the first wolf he had controlled. It wasn't killed by the pack?
He had pulled his consciousness out to avoid the pain, and the wounded wolf must have used that chance to escape.
The wolf clearly saw the glowing tiger and the boy on its back. It tensed, turning to flee.
But Kai had an idea. Staring at the wolf's back, he yelled, "Come here!"
As the words left his mouth, Kai felt a faint heat ignite from the rose-gold pentagram inside the wolf's ear, a feeling that instantly spread through the wolf's entire body. The fleeing animal stopped dead in its tracks, turned, and ran over to Kai, wagging its tail.
I knew it! Kai realized. Once the mark is applied, giving a command draws on the target's own energy, not mine. He had confirmed a key feature of his ability.
"Alright then," he thought. "Time for a field test on the way."
And so, as he rode the tiger, he put the controlled wolf through its paces. He quickly summarized his findings.
The Rose-Gold Pentagram's control had three modes:
First-Person: Full possession, like a VR game. Because his consciousness was using the target's brain as a "vessel," he could easily multitask. His human body's thoughts and the wolf's actions didn't get jumbled.
Third-Person: Like an RTS game, freely commanding the marked target as a unit.
Verbal Commands: Simple, spoken orders.
"First, roll over. Then, hop twice," Kai ordered the wolf running ahead.
The creature immediately rolled, hopped twice, and then resumed its previous command: "Scout ahead, check for trouble, and stay within my line of sight."
Kai nodded, satisfied. "Good. A new verbal command doesn't override an ongoing, uncompleted one."
This ability was incredible. Am I invincible?
He wondered if it worked on humans...
And speaking of humans... where am I? Is this even Earth? A radiant tiger with glowing patterns, a strange new superpower...
As Kai was lost in thought, the wolf up ahead stopped. It was sniffing the ground, having apparently found something.
It was too dark for Kai to see what... Wait.
Kai switched to Mode 1, instantly possessing the wolf's body. Through its eyes, he saw it clearly: a trail of dark, dried blood on the ground.
He used the wolf's nose to smell. There's more up ahead. The wolf's keen senses also picked up something else on the night wind: the heavy, damp smell of the ocean.
The sea is close?
And this blood... Kai's mind conjured a scene of a mafia shootout, one group landing on the shore and being hunted down by another.
As the night grew deeper and the moon brighter, the glowing, jade-like patterns on his tiger's fur seemed even more beautiful. Its elegant, powerful gait made the scout wolf running ahead look like a dumb mutt in comparison.
Before long, they arrived at the coast.
A cold, salty wind blew from the dark, vast ocean, carrying the sound of crashing waves. Using the wolf's night vision, Kai spotted a small cruise ship, half-sunk and crashed upon the rocks. A massive breach was torn in its side, and seawater was pouring in.
"Hope no one's on board." Kai patted the tiger. Its glow was way too flashy; they'd be spotted from a mile away.
He signaled the tiger to hang back, then continued to use Mode 1, piloting Kai-Wolf. The wolf easily leaped onto the bow of the wrecked, beached vessel.
Kai-Wolf landed on the wet deck, slipped, and crashed right through the main cabin door. It wasn't even locked.
Priorities: one, check for survivors. Two, find food. My human body is starving. I need calories, fast.
The cabin was a wreck. Debris was scattered in the hallways. Most of the room doors were open, the beds and desks a mess. There were bloodstains here and there. A fight had definitely happened on board.
Kai-Wolf searched for the kitchen, staying alert. CRUNCH.
It looked down. It had stepped on a newspaper.
Using the faint moonlight slanting through the windows and the wolf's excellent night vision, Kai clearly saw the text and photos.
He couldn't read a single word.
But the strange, "tadpole-like" text, almost like Unown... it looked... so familiar...
Holy crap!
A jolt ran through his mind.
This is the official alphabet from that endless-hiatus manga... Hunter x Hunter!
I've been transmigrated into the world of Hunter x Hunter?!
It was like a lightning bolt to his brain. All the bizarre things he'd experienced suddenly clicked into place.
That feeling of being submerged in weightless water... that was Aura!
And his Rose-Gold Pentagram ability... that was his Nen!
The fog in his mind cleared. Back on the shore, Kai's human body looked up at the moon. He hopped off the tiger, grabbed a leaf from a nearby bush, and then coaxed his "Tiger Bro" to carry him onto the wrecked ship.
There was one easy way to prove it.
Nen users in the HxH world all have a natural Nen category. You can find it with a simple test called Water Divination. All you need is a glass of water and a leaf.
If this works, it's 99% confirmed.
The radiant tiger landed with a heavy thud in the empty cabin. Kai slid off its back, leaf clutched tightly in his hand, and ran.
By a water cooler, Kai-Wolf was already waiting, a cup half-full of clear water held gently in its jaws.
(End of Chapter)