Chapter 32: Rolling Mist × Qi Peixin

The female mercenary hung her head, cast a fleeting, nervous glance at the stern-faced Maror, and stuck out her tongue.

When she turned back, she was met with the blank, unimpressed stare of the other rookie, a male recruit who looked at her as if she were a complete fool. Instantly, her face flushed crimson. Flustered, she began to babble incoherently, her hands waving through the air like the tentacles of a frantic octopus.

"Ah! I… I got it, okay?! I'll go ahead and scout the path!"

She bolted toward the stairs leading to the second floor, looking as if she were fleeing for her life. The rest of the group watched her go, speechless.

'That reckless idiot...' they all thought in unison.

Maror opened his mouth, intending to tell her to be careful, but before he could speak, a grotesque, massive fish lunged out from around the corner of the stairs!

Before anyone could react, the creature's jaws snapped open, revealing a throat packed with rows of jagged, needle-like teeth. In a single motion, it bit the female recruit's head clean off!

The impact was immediate. Her fragile Ten was shredded like wet paper.

"What!?"

Maror's pupils contracted. His calm Ten instantly surged into a powerful Ren.

He prepared to strike, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw their captain, Lakshya, moving with the violent momentum of a cannonball.

Lakshya slammed into the fish, fist and body working in tandem. The monster was pinned against the wall, then rebounded onto the floor, flopping a few times before falling still.

But before the group could even draw a breath of relief, the nightmare escalated!

From the second-floor stairwell, several more black, monstrous fish of the same size emerged, their scarlet eyes glowing in the dark. Simultaneously, something incomprehensible descended upon them…

A thick, roiling, white fog!

The mist surged with overwhelming intensity, crashing into the ground floor like a tidal wave. In an instant, the team found themselves swallowed by the dense vapor; they couldn't even see their teammates standing just inches away.

Within moments, the mercenary squad had lost one member, was surrounded by monsters, and had been blinded.

As the situation plummeted toward catastrophe, Maror decisively activated his ability:

"Follow Me!"

"Wait, Maror! Don't!"

Lakshya's roar echoed through the thick fog. He seemed to have realized something and was trying to stop him.

But it was too late.

Three black shadows came hurtling through the mist!

Maror's ability was designed to draw those he deemed his comrades from the heart toward his position. He had already triggered it, forcing his scattered teammates to fly toward him.

The first thing Maror saw was Captain Lakshya, his face contorted in anxiety, as if he were trying to scream a warning. Next to him, to his right, was the rookie male recruit, who seemed completely paralyzed by panic, unable to mount any effective defense.

Finally... Maror subconsciously looked toward the third shadow. It should have been the female recruit's corpse. Instead, what he saw was a fish…

A monstrous fish head protruding from the depths of the female recruit's torso, its horrific jaws wide open, lunging straight for his own throat.

Maror's breath hitched. Instinctively, he raised his arms to shield his face, channeling his aura into them through Gyo.

That instinct saved his life.

Just as the fish closed the distance, a sudden burst of Nen erupted from its body, coating its razor-sharp teeth in a lethal layer of aura!

'Gyo? No... is that Shu?!'

The unforeseen shift caught Maror completely off guard. The fish's teeth, already serrated, were now empowered like legendary blades, slicing through his arm with zero resistance, aiming to decapitate him.

At the eleventh hour, Lakshya, still flying through the air, didn't hesitate to fire a Nen blast. It exploded like a bubble right against Maror's side.

The blast didn't deal heavy damage, but the concussive force knocked Maror sideways, narrowly pulling him out of the path of the beast's bite.

Squelch!

Blood sprayed into the air, accompanied by a severed limb. Maror's right arm.

Everything happened within mere seconds, leaving no time for thought. Despite the blinding pain, Maror grabbed the male rookie by the nape of his neck with his left hand and retreated violently.

Lakshya landed, his Ken fully deployed, eyes scanning the mist with lethal focus.

Then, to everyone's shock, the monster didn't attack again. Instead, it hovered at a distance and opened its massive mouth.

A frail, elderly figure crawled out from the beast's maw. He kept his eyes closed, twitching his nose as he sniffed the mercenary team, muttering to himself:

"Three men... no, wait..."

He then proceeded to try and crawl back inside the fish.

Lakshya, pushed to the edge of his restraint, roared in blind fury:

"Who the hell are you!?"

The old man paused, finally turning toward Lakshya's voice, and answered with chilling sincerity:

"This old man is called Qi Peixin. It is the last name you will ever hear before you die."

Without waiting for their reaction, he slipped smoothly back into the monster. The fish flicked its tail and vanished into the thick fog at a terrifying speed.

Only the stunned silence of the mercenary group remained.

It was 9:31 pm, just 11 minutes since the mercenary infiltration began.

"AAAAAAH—!!"

Lakshya's crazed, blood-curdling roar tore through the building, shaking the very foundations and echoing into the night sky.

Meanwhile, at the border between the first and second floors.

"Mist~ Mist~"

Dia, who was busy kneading Misty to make it spit out more white fog, tilted his head in confusion. What's going on downstairs?

Momoze and Borksen watched the soft, white creature with curious eyes.

Minutes earlier, Dia's Ripple Radar had detected four people slaughtering a security squad. Realizing they were clearly not friendly, he had acted decisively, activating his Atmosphere Maker. His goal was to use the cover of the massive fog to bypass these dangerous individuals.

While the Great Mist obscured his own vision, his Ripple Radar allowed him to see everything with perfect clarity. He planned to add Vows and Limitations later to ensure the mist would also dampen the En of Nen users.

Once paired with his Time Stop ability for a decisive finishing blow, he would become the most terrifying assassin in any crowd, whether in a duel or a group fight.

After releasing the fog, Dia was baffled to discover that the four-person squad had suffered massive casualties within seconds.

According to his radar's silhouette, the first to die had been a female.

What struck him was that at the moment of her death, the Ripple had clearly conducted into an object that shouldn't have been there. Something had bitten her head; judging by the outline, it looked like... a giant fish?

He then sensed an unknown living entity burrowing into the woman's body in a flash, beginning to devour her organs. Shortly after, the four people he had tracked were suddenly reduced to just one on his radar.

'Did they use some ability to make themselves fly, causing them to briefly lose contact with the ground?'

On his radar, the remaining person was attacked by a monster, resulting in the loss of a left arm. Then, the figures that had 'vanished' reappeared on the radar.

A few seconds later, the earth-shattering roar that had left Dia feeling so puzzled echoed throughout the entire building.