Conrad took a slow breath and forced himself to narrow his focus.
"Let's see everything," he said to himself.
In these kinds of events, he believed it would be crucial to be aware of any potential dangers and any enemies that may be hidden.
The street below had already turned into chaos, not big like the Yorknew City Mafia massacre by the Phantom Troupe, but still enough to cause problems.
Gunfire echoed between the buildings.
Muzzle flashes bloomed and vanished in rapid succession.
In the middle of it all, Adarte moved like a living battering ram, crashing through the mafia's defensive line without hesitation.
Conrad's eyes followed him carefully.
"He is enjoying himself."
"That is good to know." Conrad thought as he looked at Adarte and his mannerisms.
Adarte was doing exactly what he was meant to do: drawing attention.
Each swing of the bat carried Nen behind it, which meant that every hit, wherever he hit, was breaking down.
He did not need to hit the heads of the mafia members; if he hit their bodies, his swing, their bodies would crush like they were hit by a truck.
And yet
"Weird," Conrad murmured.
Something didn't sit right.
Instead of pulling back into the building or scattering into the surrounding streets, the mafia members were doing something else entirely.
Groups of them were dragging metal barriers, overturned vehicles, and even reinforced furniture toward the main entrances of Strepo Apartment.
Barricades.
Conrad frowned slightly.
"This action of theirs does not make sense. Are they fools, or is it a tactic of some sort?"
If their goal was simply to weather an attack, retreating inside and sealing the building would have been faster.
Barricades like these weren't meant to stop a Nen user.
At best, they delayed ordinary forces.
At worst, they turned exits into death traps.
Unless…
"They're not trying to stop us from entering,"
Conrad realized quietly.
"They're trying to control how we enter."
His gaze lifted toward the darkened windows of the upper floors.
"Whoever that Nen user is, he or she must be the one who is making those decisions."
He stayed perfectly still.
Zetsu wrapped around him like a second skin as his Orbs drifted outward.
Below, Adarte laughed.
"Come and get it!" he shouted, his voice carrying over the gunfire.
He brought his bat down in a savage arc.
The impact crushed the mafia member, and his body collapsed without even a scream.
Another man raised his rifle.
Adarte vanished from his sight and reappeared an instant later, bat slamming into his ribs.
The man folded, coughing blood, and then vomited out a huge amount of blood; from afar, it seemed like he was vomiting his internal organs all at once.
As a Nen user, Adarte's attacks were excessive.
Every hit was more than enough to kill.
And he didn't seem to care.
In his mind, there was no moral hesitation.
These weren't bystanders.
They were traffickers, extortionists, men who had built their lives on ruining others.
Not to mention the fact that they involved kids in these events.
That fit his code well enough.
Killing these people was not killing humans but monsters in the form of humans.
Thirty seconds passed.
Then forty.
Bodies littered the street now, sprawled across the wet pavement in twisted shapes.
The smell of gunpowder mixed with iron and concrete dust.
After a full minute, over thirty mafia members were dead.
And still they kept shooting.
Rifles rattled uselessly as Adarte weaved between bullets,
He wasn't invincible; Conrad could see that.
A clean, concentrated barrage would tear him if he were not to keep moving and dodge the bullets.
But they weren't doing that.
They were panicking.
They were reacting.
"Human nature is easy to see when they are fighting against overwhelming force." Conrad thought.
His orbs brushed against the building again.
This time, something answered.
"There you are," Conrad whispered.
The Nen wasn't flooding outward like Adarte's raw aggression.
It was contained and disciplined, someone keeping their aura tight.
The barricades made sense now.
Force the attackers to commit.
Funnel them. Let impatience do the work.
Conrad's eyes narrowed.
"If you're smart," he thought, "you won't take Adarte's bait."
Which Conrad and his small team relied on.
In the end, it is not hard to see that what Adarte was doing was getting attention on himself.
If he were not, he would not need such an overwhelming force and show of power to kill the goons.
He could just keep moving faster and prefer precise attacks instead of wreaking havoc and causing all the people around to know that they are attacking.
It may fit in some cases, but this was an assassination mission; there is no need to make such a sound at all.
As if on cue, a subtle shift rippled through the upper floors of Strepo Apartment.
A window cracked open just a fraction before sealing again.
Too fast for an ordinary person to notice.
But not for him.
"Ten more seconds," Conrad estimated. "Maybe fifteen."
Below, Adarte smashed another man into a wall and planted his foot on the corpse.
"Is that all?" he yelled. "You call this protection?"
Conrad didn't move.
He knew that when he signals to Anisa, whoever that nen user is has to show himself to take her on.
If they did not, they would know that the mafia members will die all out, and then the Nen user himself would have to fight two Nen users at the same time, which was a situation that no Nen users with some intelligence behind them preferred, excluding people like Uvogin.