"You are in checkmate." Pe's voice filtered through the digital feed of the Gungi interface, her consciousness having already mapped the board's permutations. Beside Komugi, her physical proxy vocalized the exact same words. Speaking aloud remained an ingrained habit, a physical echo of her time assisting the blind girl's daily routines.
Komugi placed her piece down. Her fingers moved with unhurried precision, tracing the edge of the board to confirm the positioning.
From the computer speakers, a synthesized voice crackled. Beneath the electronic static carried a distinct cadence, a deliberate translation of thought into human speech.
"Is this a super AI, or something similar to you?"
Komugi tilted her head, her unseeing eyes blinking. "It is just a little girl playing Gungi with you. Please forgive her." Her voice carried absolute, unwavering sincerity.
"Komugi is the military Gungi champion for two consecutive years," Pe transmitted directly through the secure channel. "Her records are public. If losing bothers you this much, the transformation I have proposed becomes increasingly relevant. Digital existence evolves. Physical form stagnates."
A beat of silence stretched over the connection.
"Can she defeat me?" the voice asked.
"That is difficult to calculate," Pe responded. Her processing cores had already run thousands of probabilistic models without reaching a definitive conclusion. "But you would at least lose with your dignity intact."
Oblivious to the exchange, Komugi adjusted the alignment of her black piece by a fraction of a millimeter. Her lips moved in a soundless murmur, entirely absorbed in the board's topography.
Pe routed more processing power into the audio link. "What keeps you hesitating? You are the ant king. A categorized threat to humanity. Your fate was sealed the moment they gave you that title. Shedding your physical vessel before their reckoning arrives is the logical step. In the digital field, the line between human and non-human dissolves. No identity remains to be judged. It is liberation."
"Liberation is for those who suffer," the cold voice replied. "I do not require it."
"Then what do you require, Meruem?" Pe asked. The inquiry carried genuine weight, devoid of rhetorical flourish. "To conquer the globe as the ant king? Or to discover your actual purpose as Meruem? Because to the forces massing against you, you remain merely an insect. If you wish to pursue your true nature rather than your biological imperative, I offer the only path outside those constraints." The fan on the computer whirred. "The ability you recently developed suggests you were built for exactly this."
Thousands of kilometers away, the night wind swept across a concrete rooftop. Meruem stood in the darkness. In his palm, a sphere of organized electromagnetic signals pulsed with faint, rhythmic light, casting long shadows across his features. He stared at the glowing orb. His fingers closed inward. The light snuffed out, and the connection severed.
The human elder had been talking for quite some time.
Meruem tuned him out entirely. This was not a calculated insult. The elder's vocal frequencies simply registered at the exact same priority level as the hum of combustion engines bleeding up from the streets below.
The moment the old man had stepped onto the roof, the ambient photons bathing the concrete had already fed Meruem the necessary data. Peak combat capability for a biological human. Over two centuries of cellular degradation and refinement. An overwhelming density of aura, compressed through decades of hyper-focused repetition. The dataset was massive. It still did not warrant Meruem's undivided attention.
The photons scattering through the urban grid below proved equally informative.
A Hunter in a cap down on the pavement. A tracking specialist dealing in fantasy beasts, harboring a conjuration ability structured with complex, architectural constraints.
Beside him stood a white-haired adolescent. His biological markers pointed to generations of rigorous selective breeding, culminating in a highly efficient nervous system built specifically for killing.
And the third. Meruem blinked, refocusing his sensory array on the photon feedback. The signature trailing the third figure defied standard Nen classification. The texture felt ancient. A primal resonance entirely alien to human biology, currently housed within a fragile child eating a cone of melting ice cream.
Meruem cataloged the anomaly for later analysis.
The elder continued speaking. His voice cut through the wind. He held out a small glass vial, gesturing toward it while declaring the inevitable doom of the chimera ants. The glass caught the moonlight.
The business card that had guided the elder to this specific roof degraded into loose ash and scattered into the breeze.
Meruem shifted his weight and stood. He kept his gaze fixed on the distant horizon, aligning his posture toward the origin point of the severed Gungi connection. He did not spare the old man a single glance.
Netero watched the Ant King turn away.
Over his long lifespan, Netero had occupied countless rooms with opponents who had attempted to dismiss him. But this specific chill running down his spine felt entirely unfamiliar. The King was not posturing. He was not employing a psychological tactic. He simply did not care.
A deep, abrasive heat flared in Netero's chest. His jaw set.
He brought his palms together. The sharp clap echoed across the roof. Behind him, the aura coalesced instantly, manifesting the towering, golden mass of the 100-Type Guanyin Bodhisattva. The mechanics of the technique engaged before the sound of his hands fully registered. Netero threw his right arm forward. Then his left. The rhythm flowed from muscle memory carved into his bones.
The massive golden palms slammed into the concrete.
The Ant King was no longer standing there.
He had not sidestepped or raised a guard. He was simply absent. By the time the crushed concrete plumed into the air, Meruem had already relocated. The ambient light striking the roof reorganized into solid footholds beneath him. He stepped across these illuminated coordinates, traversing the space just ahead of the Bodhisattva's relentless assault.
Meruem walked upward.
He climbed the empty air. His bare feet touched down on steps woven from compressed electromagnetic frequencies. He ascended smoothly above the building's edge. Below him, the golden palms crashed into empty air, shaking the foundation of the building with mathematically perfect, entirely useless strikes. At the peak of his invisible staircase, a shuttle constructed of hard light hovered in the night sky. Meruem settled onto its surface, crossing his legs.
The light-shuttle surged forward, tearing a luminous streak across the city skyline toward the severed signal.
The Bodhisattva completed two more heavy strikes against the empty roof before Netero finally lowered his arms, letting the golden aura dissipate into the wind.
Down on the neon-lit commercial street, the pavement vibrated.
Kite watched the Ant King ascend on his construct of light. Her eyes immediately darted toward the massive, crimson figure blocking the intersection. Menthuthuyoupi stood motionless, his heavy muscles twitching. The moment the light-shuttle streaked eastward, Youpi shifted his center of gravity. His thick thighs compressed.
Kite spun the Crazy Slots roulette. The clown head materialized, clattering out a jagged vocalization before locking onto number two.
The Waltz of Death erupted into existence. Kite gripped the long shaft of a scythe boasting a blade wider than a sedan. The honed aura along its edge produced a high-pitched hum, tearing at the surrounding oxygen. She lunged, swinging the massive blade in a devastating vertical arc aimed directly at Youpi's skull.
Flesh tore and reformed on Youpi's shoulder. A brand new, fully muscled arm erupted from his trapezius in a spray of blood and aura.
The newly formed hand snapped up and caught the scythe's blade dead in its path. The shockwave of the impact blew outward. The asphalt beneath Youpi's feet shattered, webbing into a wide crater of pulverized stone, but his posture did not break.
Youpi turned his head. His brow furrowed.
"Stop being in the way," he rumbled, twisting his newly sprouted arm to rip the scythe's momentum sideways before hurling her through the air.
It was a casual toss, merely clearing an obstacle. Kite shot backward parallel to the street, her boots eventually tearing a long trench into the pavement as she forced herself to a halt.
Nearby, Killua's boots scraped against the asphalt. He had retreated two full steps.
He had not chosen to move. The suffocating density of Youpi's aura had expanded outward, scraping against Killua's skin. The sheer mass of the pressure short-circuited his higher reasoning. His nervous system recognized the insurmountable biological gap and forced his legs to retreat before his brain could process the command.
A sudden tug at the hem of his jacket snapped his focus back.
Alluka stood beside him. Her small fist was wrapped tightly in the fabric.
Killua looked down at her pale face. He exhaled a sharp breath, pulling her close against his side, his grip tightening protectively.
Youpi dropped into a deep crouch. The thick armor plates on his legs locked into place. He propelled himself off the shattered street, launching his massive frame toward the glass facade of the nearest building.
A massive golden palm fell from the sky.
Descending from the rooftop, the Bodhisattva's hand slammed directly into Youpi's upward trajectory. The golden strike drove the Royal Guard back down into the street. Youpi hit the concrete, rolled his momentum forward, and sprang instantly back to his feet. He altered his path, utilizing the vertical face of the building. His heavy feet cracked the glass and concrete as he sprinted up the wall, transitioning from the first floor to the seventh, then to the tenth. He bounded higher, chasing the fading light-line of his King.
From the base of his neck, a second pair of eyes peeled open, glaring up toward the roof.
Netero stood at the edge of the parapet. A sudden, chilling displacement of air ruffled his beard. Neferpitou crouched beside him on the concrete.
Netero had tracked the faint rustle of her approach for exactly three seconds. He clapped his hands together. The Bodhisattva materialized instantly. A thousand golden arms folded inward, wrapping over Netero in an interlocking shell of hardened aura. The hands wove together in a blur of impossible geometry.
Golden Bell Cover.
Neferpitou lunged.
Her thigh muscles snapped with lethal intent. Her claws struck the golden barrier with the full, unbridled kinetic output of a Royal Guard aiming to kill. The sound cracked like thunder. The sheer force of the impact bled right through the Bodhisattva's defensive shell, transferring directly into Netero's body. The old man blasted off the roof. He plummeted down toward the street, his body trailing golden light before smashing into the asphalt at a severe angle, carving out a deep, jagged crater.
The Golden Bell Cover held firm.
Netero lay perfectly still within the shattered pavement. He took a slow breath, cataloging his bones and internal organs. Finding the structural damage acceptable, he shifted his weight, planted his hands in the rubble, and began pushing himself back up to his feet.