Four white snakes with cursed lips could drain all the blood from a person in just eleven seconds.
Barrigen stood at the edge of the crowd. Belerainte kept his distance after receiving a warning from the square-faced servant.
By the time Belerainte rushed to Barrigen's side, a third of the man's blood had already been drained.
Even if Belerainte managed to tear away one of the white snakes, Barrigen's fate was sealed.
Everyone could only watch as Barrigen shriveled, his once slightly plump frame now more withered than a dead tree.
When all of his blood had been drained, the four white snakes fully revealed themselves before the group, letting everyone see their true forms—serpentine white bodies, cobra-like heads, and even five mouths stacked vertically.
Just as fear began to ripple through the crowd, all four white snakes vanished in an instant.
"They just disappeared?!"
"What the hell were those things..."
"Was that a Nen Beast? That's insane!"
Clearly, the group was stunned by the spectacle—at both the power and the danger of the creature. But even more quietly, everyone memorized the details, storing them to report back to their respective masters.
Even Barrigen's partner, Belerainte, simply stared at the corpse for three seconds before contacting the Army to carry the shriveled body away.
...
"You're bold. I warned you not to act with ill intent—and you kill again, just like that."
Furykov glanced at Kurapika, who stood frowning in deep thought. He immediately realized the attack hadn't come from the Fourteenth Prince's camp.
No, this was the work of one of the remaining three Nen users hiding in the crowd.
"Even after what just happened, he's not rattled at all. Instead, he's fully focused... This guy Kurapika really is something. He's already figured it out—that this isn't the work of any prince's guardian spirit beast, but a deliberate assassination."
As Furykov sized up Kurapika, he also stole glances at the remaining hidden Nen users.
"You clearly killed someone," he thought, "and yet there's no warning or punishment from the one stationed in the back room.
Is it because the attack held no malicious intent toward the princes or the queen? Or has that person already launched their punishment? Does their ability have cooldowns or a limit on uses?"
The most shaken person was the square-faced servant who had been possessed at the beginning.
She had watched helplessly as a strange, masked figure launched an attack—and then disappeared silently along with the four white snakes, just as suddenly as they'd appeared.
And no one noticed the whole thing.
Either the assassin deactivated their Nen after the kill, or they've already taken over a new host.
All of this happened before most had even started properly learning Nen, serving as a brutal wake-up call.
Some of the guards began whispering among themselves:
"If someone's trying to stop us from learning Nen, it must be one of the princes who didn't send their men here. Could it be their Nen Beast doing this?"
A shadow hung over the room. The guards were tense, clearly no longer interested in continuing their physical ability training.
Those who were already familiar with Nen and the egg-in-the-pot ritual—like Furykov and Belerainte—understood this wasn't the doing of any prince's guardian Nen Beast.
After all, the parasitic beasts tied to the princes are invisible to ordinary eyes.
But the four white snakes? They had taken physical form, visible to even the servants.
That alone was enough to rule out the Fourteenth Prince or the other princes' guardian beasts.
Clearly, this was the work of a hidden Nen user.
Kurapika saw how rattled everyone was and ordered the group to disband for the day, telling them to return tomorrow to resume training.
...
News of the incident in Hall 1014 quickly spread to the princes who had sent guards to study Nen. It caused quite a stir.
Meanwhile, in Room 1014—
"Someone started killing on the first day?" Kurapika frowned. "This is going to make the rest of the teaching process a lot harder."
"But how did they do it?" Bill asked, looking both confused and uneasy. "If it were a typical Nen Beast, we'd have seen it. Which means... the assassin's ability probably includes some kind of invisibility—only visible to the target."
"...So if the assassin targets us, we won't be able to see them either?"
Kurapika shook his head.
"Not necessarily. I watched the four white snakes closely. They were fast at draining blood, yes, but they weren't brimming with aura. Any trained Nen user could resist them."
"In other words, the assassin only went after guards who haven't learned Nen yet."
Bill's voice rose with urgency.
"Then if this continues, our Nen teaching conference might collapse completely... Morgan, do you know who the assassin is?"
He glanced toward the sofa, where Ronnel was lounging lazily.
Kurapika followed Bill's gaze. He, too, was curious what Ronnel thought.
"Yeah, I know. Good news, right?" Ronnel responded casually with a nod.
He then explained the ability—[Silent Majority].
"So that's it!" Bill's eyes lit up. "No wonder we couldn't see the humanoid beast. It's the ability at work!"
Then he asked, more urgently, "Morgan, who's the killer?"
"I don't care who they are~"
Ronnel's answer caught Bill off guard.
"Either way, your goal with this whole Nen teaching conference is to stir up the waters—to fish in chaos, right?"
He turned to Kurapika, who was still deep in thought.
"So if someone causes trouble during the conference, the princes will grow suspicious. Isn't that exactly what you wanted?"
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Fanfic is completed on patreon.com/FanficsHub (799 chapters in total)