Chapter 121: Feitan + Sonic = ?
Ross had noticed: the group entering Castlevania this time was almost entirely the combat wing of the Phantom Troupe.
Phinks, Nobunaga, Uvogin, Bonolenov, Franklin. The only support-role member in the mix was Machi, probably brought along for her intuition to help navigate their path forward.
And looking at how they were moving, it was obvious Phinks was leading. Which meant no further analysis was needed. They were here for Feitan.
Maybe Phinks genuinely believed what Feitan had said, and wanted to personally see his friend off, to spare him any more time trapped inside Castlevania's walls. A kind thought. Unfortunately, a completely futile one.
Same as it had always been: as long as Castlevania stood, Feitan's soul carried Castlevania's mark. There was no leaving.
At the same time the combat wing was heading in, Chrollo, the Troupe's undisputed center of gravity, had taken the remaining members and walked straight away from the area.
Ross couldn't immediately work out what they were planning. But he had a fairly good read on what Hisoka, somewhere in that departing group, was thinking.
On one hand, Hisoka had publicly declined Feitan's fight invitation, giving himself a perfectly legitimate excuse to refuse any order to follow the others inside.
On the other hand, with the entire combat wing now occupied inside the castle, this was a rare window. An opening Hisoka would almost certainly be working to exploit for a face-to-face confrontation with Chrollo.
Under normal circumstances, Chrollo always had at least one or two Troupe members nearby. Hisoka was self-assured to a fault, but even he wouldn't be arrogant enough to think he could take down three Troupe members including the leader in a single go.
But now, with numbers this thinned out, and the possibility of further splitting off for separate preparation tasks, Hisoka couldn't possibly not be making his move.
From a bird's-eye view, though, the leader probably had Hisoka's entire playbook mapped out already. He had simply never given him the opening to act on it, and had consistently used Hisoka's hunger for a decisive fight to turn him into a useful tool instead.
Whether this particular troop split was another case of drawing a snake out of its hole was not something Ross could call on the spot. He wasn't living inside Chrollo's head.
"Die!"
Uvogin, who had been bottled up for three straight days, hit a ghoul unit without a second's hesitation. The thing looked frail enough to crumble on its own, barely held together, strips of rotting flesh hanging off what remained.
Nobunaga and the others, who could have said something, deliberately said nothing. Let Uvogin figure out Castlevania's rules with his own body. A stubborn type like him, even pain probably wouldn't make him accept it without testing it himself first.
What followed was a view from extremely close range: a ghoul that didn't even have much meat left on its bones sent the man who had just punched it launching backward through the air, curling in on himself the same way someone's midsection would react to taking a Super Destruction Punch square in the gut.
Piercing pain shot from his knuckles and radiated through his entire body in an instant. Castlevania's rules applied equally to everyone who tried to hit its monsters bare-handed.
"How is that even possible!?"
Uvogin's face had gone crooked with outrage.
He had already heard from Shalnark's interviews with Nobunaga and the others. The rule had been summarized clearly: do not hit Castlevania's monsters with bare hands. He had heard it. He simply refused to accept it on principle, and had insisted on testing it with his own fists.
And judging by his expression, he still hadn't accepted the result.
One punch. Two punches. Three punches.
"All right, Uvogin. At this rate you might just become the first Enhancement-type in history to beat himself to death with his own fists."
"...Hell."
Uvogin watched Franklin raise one hand and cut down every monster unit in sight with the same casual ease someone would use to sweep wheat, and felt his whole sense of self start to crumble. Three punches hadn't even broken through a ghoul's scalp.
In a certain sense, Castlevania was specifically built to counter pure brawlers like Uvogin and Phinks.
If they wanted to kill Castlevania's monsters bare-handed, they had two options: pick up something that could be classified as a weapon, throwing knives, throwing axes, whatever the castle had lying around, or coat their strikes with enough Nen to count. Even destroying one little skeleton soldier only required a small amount of Nen per hit. But with enough enemies, the accumulated cost added up fast.
And in situations like this, Franklin, king of cleanup, became the genuine VIP.
Nobunaga had already walked this route once before, and the Grand Cemetery didn't have many paths worth discussing anyway. The group arrived at the Grand Cemetery BOSS area, where Feitan was, without much trouble.
Feitan was sitting on top of a crumbling section of wall, high up, face tilted back toward the night sky.
Honestly, dying and coming back had given him a certain flair he hadn't had before.
"Fei."
Phinks's voice carried everything he hadn't been able to say. Feitan lowered his head and looked at the arrivals. A flicker of genuine surprise moved through his eyes.
To put it plainly, setting aside Hisoka, that coward who had declined without throwing a single punch, the assembled group in front of him right now was essentially every combat fighter he had ever actually wanted to test himself against while he was alive.
"Impressive lineup."
One two-word assessment for the fighters in front of him, followed immediately by a question.
"One-on-one? Or a pile-on?"
"One-on-one."
Uvogin, who had been looking forward to getting involved, took one look at Phinks's expression, let out a long exhale, and dropped himself onto a broken slab of stone. He gave the fight to Phinks without another word.
This was, in its own way, a send-off ceremony conducted by Feitan's closest friend.
Phinks and Feitan clashed.
But it quickly became apparent: Feitan was losing ground. Or, more precisely, the Feitan who had died and come back was weaker than he had been.
The umbrella-sword was gone, burned through by Rising Sun, and fighting without his most reliable weapon was one factor. The deeper problem was that as a Post-Mortem Nen Beast, his entire body was composed of Nen. His HP and Nen were running on the same bar.
Dealing damage to Phinks required drawing on that Nen, which was the same as actively draining his own life. Pain Packer: The Unforgivable and Rising Sun were both off the table. Rising Sun drained and burned all of the caster's Nen, which meant it would kill him first. Phinks, as a "player" under Castlevania's rules, entered the Phase Movement backward-jump state every time he took a hit, a state that also granted immunity to Rising Sun's heat.
Nobody laughed. If anything, the mood had shifted into something that was hard to name. Bittersweet, maybe.
Right up until strange sparks of electric light flickered suddenly across Feitan's body, near the end of his last reserves.
"My turn."
Once Feitan's combined bar dropped to around a quarter, Ross cut in and took direct control.
And then-
[Detected: you are controlling BOSS unit "Feitan Portor"]
[Feitan Portor's physical constitution meets the threshold to receive additional temporary character template mapping.]
[Your currently available character templates: Kunio, Sonic, Gilgamesh, Trevor Belmont.]
[You have selected "Sonic."]