Chapter Archive

Kakin throws a festival as 200,000 passengers board the Black Whale. The ship's order is laid out — five class tiers, martial law, military-run phones, a one-way bulkhead sealing Tiers 1–2 off as the contest's only 'hunting grounds' — while Balsamilco briefs Benjamin's soldiers to act as guards until the order for 'Operation Assault' comes. Kurapika promises Oito a way to avoid the battle, marks the bulkhead as an escape route, and senses aura rising from Woble's cradle where nothing should be.

The Black Whale sails: three weeks in known waters, five in seas that eat ships. The Zodiacs disperse to their posts across the tiers with Beyond in a Tier 1 holding cell. By nightfall five of Oito's royal guards lie dead with their blood drained through small wounds, Kacho frames a twin 'alliance' as cover, and Kurapika ends the chapter holding a gun and a pendulum on his own room.

Kurapika briefs the room: the voyage is a war of heirs, and the royal guards were the higher queens' spies all along. Parasitic Guardian Spirit Beasts crowd visibly into the suite — unknown even to the princes who host them — and Kurapika broadcasts their existence ship-wide under his real name. Then Momoze's beast puppets Sayird into killing Kurton and the last two royal guards.

Steal Chain is revealed as Kurapika strips Little Eye from the restrained Sayird — parasitic beasts, he learns, cannot be stolen. Two hours in, Room 1014 is down to two guards; Sevanti reassigns Momoze's whole detail to little Marayam; and Halkenburg, his bow-armed beast newly revealed, asks to withdraw from a contest his father blandly refuses to stop.

The elder princes' Guardian Spirit Beasts parade before the reader as Tubeppa allies with Tserriednich, and a system rule surfaces: beasts neither kill each other nor directly attack rival hosts. Theta resolves to teach the Fourth Prince Nen personally — the better to stunt him — while across the block Halkenburg finds every one of his guards unconscious.

Balsamilco talks Benjamin out of opening with Tserriednich's murder: the beasts are invisible to the First Prince, and Kurapika's broadcast burned the assault's surprise. Instead, Benjamin's Nen soldiers will embed in every rival's quarters with license to kill 'in self-defense' — and the first of them, Vincent, walks into Room 1014 and shoots the servant Sandra dead.

Kurapika loans Little Eye to Oito through Stealth Dolphin, linking their minds. Vincent is drained by Steal Chain and kills himself rather than face a bluffed 'confession-forcing' ability — Balsamilco duly misfiles Kurapika as a Manipulator and posts Babimyna as the replacement. The reader learns Emperor Time's terms: one hour of lifespan per second.

Three princes call Room 1014 at once; Shimano, defying instructions, connects Zhang Lei first. The Third Prince trades a truce for a working seminar on Nen and the Seed Urn ceremony, Benjamin hangs up unserved, and Tubeppa's captain Maor gives Kurapika one hour before his own visit. Information becomes the block's hardest currency.

Zhang Lei lends Sakata and Hashito to Room 1014 until the next banquet — chaperoned by Queen Duazul's Slakka on First Queen Unma's orders. Camilla plans to kill Benjamin first and Halkenburg second while Musse eavesdrops for proof, one of Momoze's remaining guards privately plans her murder, and Chrollo appears in a Tier 5 hall whose number spells 'massacre.'

With Maor and the loaned guards watching, Oito activates Little Eye and pilots a cockroach into Marayam's quarters — while everyone present is steered into crediting the ability to Bill. Kurapika formalizes the offer that reshapes the arc: he will teach the basics of Nen, to anyone, in two weeks. Babimyna quietly blankets the room in En.

Emperor Time crosses three hours — roughly 450 days of lifespan — and drops Kurapika unconscious mid-warning. The same night, Momoze is strangled in her sleep and her six remaining guards are detained for court-martial. The Nen class is set for 9 a.m. with two seats per prince; only Tyson and Camilla abstain.

Kurapika wakes after nine hours — as does Oito, linked through Stealth Dolphin — having spent roughly five years of life. He derives the three-hour rule and its triple-length blackout penalty. Sixteen students attend the first class, where Furykov counts four attendees faking ignorance of Nen; Tserriednich orders his guards to kill everyone if two weeks pass without results; and someone activates Silent Majority inside the room.

Silent Majority's rules surface — only user and victim see the marionette; a bloodless deactivation rebounds on the user — and its snakes drain Barrigen dead in the middle of class, matching the first night's killings and clearing Woble's beast of suspicion. Furykov, from aura alone, pegs Kurapika as a right-handed Conjurer; Babimyna concludes the 'Manipulator' story is a decoy.

Loberry is arrested for Barrigen's death and Queen Seiko draws an accomplice investigation — the system punishing everyone but the killer. Kurapika clears Bill and Shimano by pendulum and files a structural hypothesis: one prince's withdrawal might unravel every beast. Below decks, five Spiders surface, and the mafia map is drawn — Xi-Yu to Zhang Lei, Heil-Ly to Tserriednich, Cha-R to Luzurus.

Furykov's four ringers resolve strangely: three don't know they can use Nen — Loberry initiated by Silent Majority, Shedule and Yuhirai half-awakened and memory-wiped by Halkenburg's beast — leaving a fourth expert still hidden. Momoze's killer is revealed as her guard Tuffdy, whom Hanzo executes and stages as a suicide. Hanzo also finds Room 1013 empty but for a sinister copy of Marayam's beast, and Camilla marches out to kill Benjamin.

Camilla's trump card detonates: Musse shoots her dead, and her counteractive Cat's Name revives her by taking her killer's life. She kills one of Unma's guards en route, shoots Benjamin — who refuses to retaliate and has her arrested — and the reader learns Benjamin Baton: the First Prince inherits the abilities of loyal soldiers who die, Vincent's and Musse's stars already on his palm.

Kurapika phones Vergei — who answers from a room that no longer physically exists — names Tuffdy as Momoze's killer, and refuses a Hunters-for-intel swap to keep courting the younger princes. Fugetsu's beast opens a door-and-tunnel to Kacho's bed; Rihan reveals Predator and aims it at Salé-salé's beast; and Zhang Lei's beast coughs up a second coin.

Beast dossiers stack up — Tyson's aura-harvesting book, Tubeppa's drug-brewing partner beast, Luzurus's desire-shaped traps, Halkenburg's Nen-pooling fellowship — while Shikaku requests backup against suspected memory revision. Biscuit drops her disguise to convert the skeptic Vergei into her own Nen student, and the Hunters in Room 1013 deduce they are sealed inside a one-way copy of the room, likely Marayam's beast's doing. Halkenburg marches out to petition his father in person.

Turned away from the king's gate, Halkenburg vows a letter a day. Cleapatro's court confines Benjamin and Camilla to the VVIP area until the vanished Musse is found — while Benjamin secretly watches Camilla through the dead man's Secret Window. Silent Majority claims Myuhan; Tserriednich's water divination reads Specialist; and Fugetsu's door proves to keep a once-a-day rhythm.

Kacho sets the escape for the next Sunday banquet's music show, coordinated with Melody in Mosquitone Morse code. The full Troupe assembles in Tier 5: Illumi has replaced Uvogin at Hisoka's own paid request — with a contract should Illumi kill him — and Chrollo, revealing Neon Nostrade's ability has vanished from his book, orders Hisoka's death prioritized. The lower tiers' geography firms up: one family per tier, plus unregistered passengers no manifest admits.

The three bosses debut, and all are royal blood: Onior and Brocco are Nasubi's half-brothers, Morena his illegitimate daughter — 'Second-track Fakers,' scarred at birth and paid to stay invisible. Morena's Contagion is explained: 23 infected members leveling up through murder, an ability at level 20, a whole new cell at 100. The other families put bounties on Hisoka's location; Morena plans havoc for its own sake.

The Tier 3 murders' lone 'witness' Cashew is exposed to the reader as Luini's accomplice, salting her testimony to test the Association's investigators. Luini himself farms three more Cha-R warehouse guards for level 24 and marks the family hideout for his sealed-room transport ability. Ken'i proposes collaboration to three Spiders; Franklin elects to simply wait for Hisoka in Tier 5.

Mizaistom tells Kakin's officers the truth they refuse: the murders are succession-driven, the killers will keep killing to keep their powers, and the under-policed lower decks will pay first. A curfew sweep turns up Illumi and Kalluto — Illumi flatly confirms every Spider is aboard — and a detained stowaway with no ID turns out to be Prince Fugetsu, caught on Tier 3.

Fugetsu is questioned gently and returned to Tier 1 under 72-hour watch; Mizaistom's phoned 'crackdown' instructions to Melody hide a Hunter-code order reading 'Assist Princes escape fully.' Rihan clocks the mind-bending mechanics of Salé-salé's smoke beast, then has Predator eat it whole — and, spent for 48 hours, hands the Eighth Prince's watch to Yushohi, whose Nen suits assassination.

Four days of letters were cover: Halkenburg and five guards draw guns and he walks to his father demanding the contest end. His bullet freezes before Nasubi's face — the king is 'part of the ritual, unable to die until it ends' — and when Halkenburg turns the gun on himself his beast catches that round too. He leaves awakened, resolved to win the throne to destroy the system; his arrow pierces Shikaku's defenses and steals his will at the cost of one follower's body. At 8 p.m., Yushohi radios Benjamin: Salé-salé is dead.

Melody's sincere flute entrances the whole royal deck through the loudspeakers while the pianist Keeney leads the twins past sleeping soldiers to a lifeboat — then shoots himself so no accomplice can be traced to the Association. As the boat nears open water a horde of hands swarms it: leaving the ship means death. Kacho shoves her sister through a door back aboard; a 'Kacho' follows her out; the real one drifts dead to sea. Her beast, Without You, now wears her face.

Before the banquet: Ken'i and Vice Boss Tajao walk three Spiders through the custom that legalizes mafia war — bosses square hits within 24 hours, from off their own turf. Three hundred workers are missing, Morena's Tier 1 room is empty, and no call has come; Nobunaga offers to kill her personally. Tserriednich, on the phone, disowns his family's rogue mafia arm while Theta watches a second, self-made Specialist beast take shape behind him.

During the banquet broadcast, Theta engineers her one clean shot: Zetsu training, beast absent, a bullet through Tserriednich's head. The corpse vanishes; the prince materializes behind her, alive and delighted. His beast then nicks her cheek — first warning for lying, a brand next, and for a third lie 'she will cease to be human.' Salkov begs her to stop while Tserriednich, intrigued by the flute's vision, orders Melody invited.

Salkov's luminol finds no blood: Theta saw an illusion. Halkenburg, meanwhile, runs controlled experiments on his own ability — brain monitors, four hypotheses about where a swapped soul goes — and sends Sumidori-in-Shikaku to Luzurus's door, where the body shouts loyalty to Benjamin and shoots itself. Sumidori wakes home; Shikaku is dead; Benjamin names Halkenburg his biggest threat. Melody, held at the Bureau, learns the princes want her flute for their own killings.

The shooting replays from Tserriednich's side: total Zetsu grants him a vision ten seconds into the future, during which the world perceives only his past self. He toys with Theta inside the lag, steps around her bullet, and lands in Melody's broadcast vista wondering, happily, how fun Nen is. His stated program: Zetsu entry under one second, then domination of the succession — and the world.

Kurapika's awakening assembly line runs behind closed doors: borrowing Bill's enhancement through Stealth Dolphin, he semi-coercively opens students' nodes — Ladiolus, Maor, Yuri, Satobi. Furykov confirms no manipulation; Babimyna inventories the right hand's growing résumé. Bill explains why he stays despite being Beyond's plant, and Tubeppa correctly deduces Salé-salé was murdered and that she is next. A fourth aura rumbling shakes the block.

Balsamilco dissects the Shikaku incident and states his cornerstone theory: princes — and their beasts — cannot directly kill princes, so Halkenburg's beast would never back a regicide ability. Vict's garbled scream over the radio proves him half right: Shikaku is dead, Vict alive but taken. Halkenburg is arrested to sever him from his men. And Camilla's Have-Not guards are revealed as curse assassins — one per rival prince — with Sarahell assigning herself to Woble via Kurapika's classes.

Zhang Lei visits Onior in person for Nen intelligence, formalizing prince–family cooperation. Onior orders Hinrigh to find Hisoka on Tier 3, cede Tier 4's search to the Spiders, and kill Morena in passing. On Tier 3 the war goes loud: Zakuro's Bloody Mary and Lynch's Body and Soul subdue Heil-Ly members registered as civilians, and Hinrigh's Biohazard turns two meddling soldiers' gun barrels into snakes that shoot them dead.

Three leveled Heil-Ly members stalk Hinrigh through the crowds, negotiating the split of his ten levels before they have him. His handcuff-pigeons shrug off their bullets, shackle the weapon-limbed Padaille, and Hinrigh pushes the man's own conjured axe into his skull. The survivors run to ask Morena for instructions.

Padaille's corpse walks itself away carrying Misha Hao — the Xi-Yu's dead undertaker, whose post-mortem ability tidies the family's kills. A corporal sells Hinrigh the ship's dirtiest secret for fifty million: silenced wiring crews and a room behind Room 3101 that no blueprint admits. And Zakuro's blood-drops find 'Hisoka' — a tall man whose reflex counter drops Lynch and whose aura terrifies Zakuro into belief.

Luini pitches the Troupe on destroying both families, the royals, and the old world; Nobunaga stabs him mid-sentence, bisects him, and leaves the corpse as a declaration of war on the Heil-Ly. In auditorium 8, Hinrigh offers the found 'Hisoka' a VVIP room to sit the war out — accepted, with one carve-out: he will not refuse a fight the Troupe starts. Corporal Maizan steps into Room 3101 and vanishes.

Morena preps her next moves: capture one of Tserriednich's personal soldiers and infect them as a tracking device, with the kidnapper Sodom and the wrestler Dogman assigned. Meanwhile five ordinary soldiers on Tier 3 — Tserriednich's actual friends from academy days — reason their way from barracks gossip to Nen, Morena, and a coming classified purge, and set up a transfer-request early-warning system. Borksen, transferred as 'Nen advisor,' counsels pure survival.

Hinrigh confirms the Heil-Ly teleport with camcorder footage while three Spiders cut into the hidden room — and the arc dives into Meteor City. Child Chrollo dubs a foreign tokusatsu tape into the local tongue with Pakunoda, Sheila, and Sarasa as the heroines; a furious Uvogin hunts him for a stolen video; and the city's stolen children pile up in small graves.

The screening is a hit; when the tape jams, Chrollo carries the show live, voicing heroes and monsters alike, and even Uvogin is won over. The future Spiders claim roles, name themselves a troupe — 'each of us is worth a hundred' — and Sarasa slips away alone to sorting duty, watched by men in a van who have already met their quota.

Sarasa never comes back. The children find her dismembered in a hanging bag in Uga Forest, staged with a note and filmed by her killers. Over her embalmed body Machi meets the Nen user Renko; over her grave Chrollo lays out the plan — build a criminal haven, lure the culprits back through the coming communication revolution, and live as a villain the world shudders at. Uvogin names him head, and the Spider is born.

The Spiders classify the Room 3101 trap — a continuous 'land mine' type rather than a barrier — by feeding it hostage Mafia neighbors. Hinrigh turns a transmitter into a raw oyster with Biohazard, swallows it, and steps into the teleporter himself, leaving the receiver with Phinks. Nobunaga follows him through; the two open door after door onto a laundry room that smells of recent occupation.

Nine Heil-Ly members lounge, unbothered, behind a door the intruders cannot pass. Hinrigh's knife in Terebellum's head transfers harmlessly into a drink can — damage displacement — and the lawyer Yokotani activates A Battle of Wits: 'LSDF': invincible puppet guards that charge Nobunaga with his actual crimes and carry him out. Hinrigh hides the oyster transmitter under a cabinet before his own expulsion and vows to map the hideout from outside.

The transmitter places the Heil-Ly hideout above Tier 3 — Morena has never technically been on her own turf, gaming the custom that legalizes the war. At the Justice Bureau, the beast wearing Kacho's face accepts what she is and vows to make Fugetsu king; the lovestruck investigator Kaiser proposes poisoning the higher princes outright and briefs Steiner on the ship's doomsday switch, special martial law. Fugetsu, marked by something, burns herself out on doors that now open endlessly — and Longhi asks Kurapika for a contract.

Behind closed doors Longhi unveils Moonlight Act — aura contracts requiring full, truthful disclosure — and everything it obliges her to tell: she is Beyond Netero's daughter, one of a generation of curse sacrifices bred into Kakin's military, each sealed under the tongue with lethal Nen that fires on death. She believes one of the princes is Beyond's own child, and her contract's reward condition is finding them — because her true plan is to kill them herself. In his cell, Beyond asks for a meeting.

Tenftory brokers the pact: if Zhang Lei, Tubeppa, and Woble are the last three, the other two renounce in his favor. Balsamilco, alone, loads TSK-17 — a self-erasing bioweapon — into his shoe to erase Halkenburg at trial. And Kaiser walks Fugetsu door to door delivering 'Kacho's final letters': cover for marking princes' rooms for her tunnel, and for reading each brother's reaction — Benjamin's slip confirms he is waiting for martial-law conditions; Luzurus hands his letter back unmoved.

Balsamilco walks into the Ministry of Justice certain Halkenburg is isolated — and finds Vict signing to him, strangers at the corridor's ends, and twelve devoted civilians powering the bow. The arrow takes him through the wall: Halkenburg now wears Benjamin's strategist. Suspicious but unprovable, Benjamin demands 'results'; Unma tells her real son she is proud of him; Kacho's letter spells out that Benjamin's own mother bore Halkenburg; and a marked Bureau staffer delivers Kaiser a message — Halkenburg is going to die soon.

Kurapika audits Zhang Lei's coins — a cumulative mint compounding toward 10^64, a king's tool for mass-producing Nen users — while keeping the loyalty-manipulation reading and Coventoba's theft to himself. Halkenburg-in-Balsamilco narrates the mind swap's proven rules and his plan: kill his own body, ride Balsamilco ten hours, win as a dead man. As day twelve begins, Halkenburg's poisoned body dies; Benjamin, believing his order fulfilled, choreographs a stately funeral.

The real Hisoka surfaces at the Tier 1 VIP casino, bored of group abilities and ceremony-made beasts — he wants one opponent to love to death. The decoy is revealed: Bonolenov impersonated him on Chrollo's orders so the mafia would 'find' and stash Hisoka, killing Lynch when her ability pierced the act. Nobunaga argues the 'Heil-Ly' are no mafia at all but annihilators, and Tajao pledges both families to the extermination — while Ken'i privately reports to Morena and weighs playing their 'joker.' Dogman, level 62, goes specialist-sniffing at the funeral.

Tajao leads three Spiders up the ship's outer shell past the waste plant between Tiers 4 and 5 — where Nobunaga realizes 'waste subcontractors' could kill on an assembly line, and turns back. Lynch's body is found; Hinrigh reconstructs the fake-Hisoka play from Zakuro's memories and the Xi-Yu vows revenge. Amid the funeral crowds Chrollo names his real prize: Kakin's three sacred treasures, whose theft would evolve Skill Hunter into the weapon that finally kills Hisoka. His conjured phone places his quarry 'up above.'

Borksen vanishes from the funeral crowds thirty minutes after her last check-in; her squad, bound by its own no-rescue pact, can only theorize. She wakes across a card table from Morena, who offers a 'negotiation game': seven explanation cards against five answer cards, the last one standing her binding reply. Yes joins the Heil-Ly; No is a death sentence; X voids everything. Reading the traps clearly, Borksen plays.

The Aim card buys Morena's story: the real Morena Prudo is in a grave; the woman across the table is a Carne Levare orphan — child of a villager 'entertained' to death by visiting royalty, scarred at birth, sorted as 'flesh' by the Heil-Ly's trafficking arm, used for twenty years. Kakin has not changed and will not. Her Contagion is a pyramid of up to 22 'children'; Borksen matters because she is an unawakened Specialist, one in three thousand. Mid-game, the ship's alarms declare Special Martial Law.

The martial-law broadcast rolls down the tiers — Tier 3 civilians kneel at gunpoint, Tier 2 returns to rooms, Tier 1 awaits inspection — while Borksen mines the announcement order for her coordinates. The Deal card costs her a kiss that is secretly an infection condition; joining requires a Yes, the kiss, and witnessing a Heil-Ly murder. Her questions finally land the prize: the hideout sits between Tiers 2 and 3, five doors, 21 members, planned before the ship was built.

Borksen's marked card triggers the game's hidden clause — cheating hands Morena's manipulation the wheel — and a voice that is not hers says Yes. Level 0, presumed surveilled from inside, she asks for a tour of her new 'comrades.' Forty minutes into martial law, Benjamin walks into the Justice Bureau, consolidates all three branches under military force with Mizaistom, Botobai, and Kaiser as witnesses — and the reader learns he is infected, roughly nine and a half hours from the end.

Eight a.m., twelfth day — the narrative rewinds to the morning before the declaration. Halkenburg-in-Balsamilco phones Benjamin from the Ministry of Justice with funeral logistics; Kaiser shelters Fugetsu, Melody, and the beast-Kacho on Tier 2; and in Room 302, Sarahell paints on a maid's face and joins the class to curse Woble. Kurapika opens round two — eighteen students in introductory and beginner tracks — lectures the camps on the contest's four-stage ritual and the dynasty's fall if no sole victor emerges aboard, and closes with a bomb: Woble is ineligible to participate.

Five hours before martial law, Slakka accuses Kurapika of drowning the class in convenient information — then the story rewinds 48 hours to what the declaration rests on. Bill caught Oito alternating masculine and feminine pronunciations of 'Woble,' the same distinction as Shimanu/Shimano; under the chain she admitted it: the baby aboard is a boy, her sister's son, while her real daughter — who underwent the Seed Urn ceremony — is off-ship with the sister, whereabouts unknown even to Oito. Back in the present only Slakka quits, and Cleapatro buries Beyond under his 1,047 dismissed lawsuits.

Priests carry Halkenburg's casket into the Princes' Burial Chamber hidden in Nasubi's quarters — where his 'Flame of Life' does not light. The king says it plainly: while the soul lives in a body, the right of succession stands. An arrow flies at Benjamin from Room 1009; mid-crisis he vomits and recognizes TSK-17. Furykov confesses everything — Unma's 48-hour ultimatum, his parentage as Beyond's son, the eye-curse under his tongue, and the logic of reflecting it by letting Benjamin die — and Benjamin, persuaded, takes him back. Special Martial Law is set for 2:15: rival guards executed on sight, Hunters exempt, princes herded to Room 1001, and a First Prince planning to die into godhood.

Fifteen minutes early, Kanjidol knifes two of Luzurus's sleeping guards in Room 1007 — and the Seventh Prince, far sharper than his image, orders no resistance, the drugs burned, and the Hunter Ridge sent to 'keep the soldier busy.' Ridge finds the bodies and the fight begins. At Room 1009, Yushohi and Chiyamasi prepare to breach — En against invincibility-on-a-timer. In Room 1014, Kurapika frames the decisive unknown: does Beyond's curse fire on contest participation, or on the Seed Urn ceremony the real Woble performed? Bill turns fully against Beyond and proposes trapping him with Moonlight Act; Oito reveals a covert mail channel through a relative in Yamato; and Kurapika, thinking of Gon and Killua, swears the missing prince will be protected.