The clearing appeared completely unremarkable.
Liam pivoted on his heel, his eyes tracking the edge of the tree line, the warm wash of the afternoon sunlight, and the high canopy stretching above the massive ancient tree. The forest they had traversed to reach this point felt entirely authentic. The sunlight filtered through the leaves at the exact angle expected for this hour. Crouched at the base of the colossal trunk, the little girl in the pointed hat seemed entirely mundane.
Liam swept his senses outward. Nothing spiked. The ambient natural energy drifted at standard, undisturbed forest levels.
He held up the black credential.
"Is this Misty Valley?" he asked.
The little girl stared at the black cardstock. She shifted her wide eyes to the three towering figures standing before her, then dropped her gaze back to the pass. Her brow furrowed, her small fingers twisting the brim of her hat as she struggled to reconcile the conflicting data.
"You are looking for Link," she finally said, her voice tight. "But you should not be here. You cannot be here. Why are you..."
"The driver told us this was the way," Liam replied. "Two or three kilometers in from the forest road. Present the credential."
The girl opened her mouth, but no sound emerged.
Shizuku stood slightly offset from the group, her head tilted as she meticulously scanned the perimeter. "This is not Misty Valley."
Both Liam and Bisky turned toward her.
"I know what Misty Valley looks like," Shizuku stated. "I lived there for a while, years ago. The trajectory was correct. The distance was approximately correct. The geographic markers matched." She dragged her gaze from the ancient roots to the small cottage, and finally to the dense edge of the woods. "But this is not the place."
Liam processed the variables. Menchi had handed them the pass. Menchi had discovered the location during the chimera ant assault on Meteor City, meaning her intelligence possessed a critical blind spot: she knew the coordinates, but not the exact nature of the destination. Shizuku, who possessed firsthand memories of the actual location, found herself standing somewhere entirely alien.
"A triggered threshold," Liam noted. "A mechanism designed to scan approaching targets and redirect those possessing the proper qualifications." He looked down at the girl. "We stepped into a Nen space the moment we crossed the forest boundary. This clearing is merely a reception room."
Bisky nodded slowly, tracing the same logic through a different framework. "A Mine-type construct. A bounded space-displacement trap anchored to a precise radius around this tree. Anyone stepping inside the designated perimeter gets yanked into a pocket dimension rather than continuing through physical reality."
The little girl pulled off her pointed hat, revealing a round, flushed face. She swallowed hard, clearly overwhelmed by the sudden intrusion of three high-level Nen users invading her sanctuary. "I am Link," she stammered. "Master will..."
"Link," a new voice interrupted.
The sound did not originate from the trees or the soil. It bled directly out of the empty air, smooth, even, and entirely devoid of panic.
"I have told you several times. If you do not wish to use my name, Master will suffice."
A fracture split the empty space. It was not a violent tear, but a surgical incision. The edges of the rift hummed with the distinct, deep violet glow characteristic of highly refined, incredibly stable Conjuration. A woman stepped through the spatial wound, moving as casually as if crossing a threshold between two rooms.
She stood tall. Her black dress hung heavily, resembling a strict uniform rather than casual attire. A dark hood obscured her hair, and a black mask concealed the lower half of her face.
Link immediately scrambled to the woman's side. The woman lowered a gloved hand, resting it protectively against the child's shoulder.
The masked woman studied the three intruders. Her dark eyes swept over Liam and Shizuku before locking onto Bisky. Her gaze drifted downward, anchoring entirely on Bisky's right arm.
Liam caught the micro-shift in her focus. He understood immediately. Bisky had lost her arm under highly specific, classified circumstances related to this location. The masked woman recognized the limb, confirming they had successfully breached the correct vault.
"Your arm regenerated," the masked woman observed. The thick fabric of her mask muffled her words, giving her voice a strange, layered resonance. "I had hoped it would. It was a point of concern."
She reached her free hand back into the glowing violet rift hovering behind her. When she withdrew it, she held a severed right arm. It was massive, heavily corded with muscle, matching the exact impossible proportions of Bisky's King Kong transformation. The flesh remained perfectly preserved, defying decay entirely through a highly specialized Nen application.
"I attempted to track your location after the incident," the woman explained. "I could not find you."
Liam knew exactly why. Bisky had retreated into the chaotic sprawl of Meteor City utilizing her Seventy-Two Transformations technique, compressing her frame and completely altering her aura signature. Locating one specific, masked signature among millions of residents without a reference point bordered on the impossible.
Bisky stared at her massive, preserved limb.
"Before I decide how I feel about you," Bisky said, her voice dropping into a lethal register, "I require absolute clarity regarding your relationship with whatever severed my arm in the first place. That connection directly dictates my next move."
"And I would appreciate knowing exactly who or what performed the amputation," Liam added smoothly. "We are operating at a significant intelligence deficit here. Any context would be excellent."
Bisky's elbow slammed sharply into his ribs before he could finish his exhale.
Liam absorbed the impact without breaking his casual posture.
The masked woman shifted her attention toward Shizuku. Her eyes narrowed slightly, confirming a lingering suspicion. Shizuku hoisted Blinky higher. The vacuum cleaner's wide mouth hung open, maintaining its perpetual, vacant stare, entirely unbothered by the rising tension.
The woman studied the vacuum fish. The corners of her eyes crinkled slightly, registering a silent, private assessment of the tool's lethal growth over the intervening years.
She turned and gestured toward the massive, twisting roots at the base of the ancient tree.
"This explanation requires a substantial amount of history," she said. "Please, sit down."
The tree dwarfed them. Its roots breached the soil like subterranean serpents, diving and resurfacing to create a jagged, wooden topography. The afternoon sunlight filtering into the pocket dimension carried genuine warmth, meaning the Nen construction maintaining the space was either unfathomably refined or had been cycling long enough to simulate authentic weather patterns.
The little girl named Link scurried forward, quietly arranging ceramic cups on a flat section of root.
The masked woman took a seat opposite the three hunters, keeping her dark hood pulled low over her brow. Link immediately tucked herself against the woman's side.
"The official historical record of Meteor City begins approximately fifteen hundred years ago," the woman began, her muffled voice steady in the quiet clearing. "Even then, it functioned exactly as it does now: a designated dumping ground for everything the world decides to discard. The historical texts begin at that juncture simply because the documentation begins there."
She paused, her dark eyes locking onto Liam.
"The actual history of this site is vastly older. And the reason that primordial history remains hidden is due to a deliberate, global choice. It was not merely Meteor City erasing its past. It was a collective erasure by everyone."
Liam held her gaze. She had stared at him moments ago, probing for any leaked information regarding the Dark Continent. He had silently demanded she lay her cards on the table first. She was finally obliging.
"The people currently inhabiting the known world," the masked woman continued, letting the silence stretch before delivering the final strike. "All of them. Across the six continents, Lake Mobius, and the World Tree at the absolute edge of the map. Every single human being you have ever encountered in the Hunter World." She inhaled a slow, deep breath. "They are, according to everything I have managed to unearth, the descendants of refugees."
She leveled her stare entirely on Liam.
"Refugees who fled the Dark Continent," she stated. "A very long time ago."
Thin wisps of steam curled upward from the ceramic cups. Link gripped her tea with both hands, staring blankly at the dirt. The colossal roots of the ancient tree boxed them in, anchoring them against the impossible weight of a buried genesis.
Liam let the silence hang, processing the catastrophic shift in the global paradigm.
"Go on," he said.