Friends

Fifteen minutes before the deadline, Kanjidol knifes two of Luzurus's bodyguards in their bunks, savoring it — martial law means never having to think again. Behind him, one 'corpse' slowly raises an arm.

Told Benjamin's riflemen already flank Room 1009, Luzurus — far sharper than his stoner image — calls it: martial law is starting, resistance is suicide. He orders all guards disarmed and gathered, the drugs burned immediately, and sends Ridge to keep Benjamin's embedded soldier 'busy,' since Hunters are exempt from the kill order.

Ridge opens the servants' quarters on Kanjidol kneeling over a corpse. 'Self-defense,' says the man with the knife. Both flare their aura; both jump. The first Hunter-versus-soldier fight of martial law begins over two murdered sleepers.

No answer at Halkenburg's door means treason against the Royal Army. Yushohi — an En user whose Stand By Me leaves him nearly defenseless while extended — audits his own odds of dying; Chiyamasi activates Muteking the Invincible Hero, accumulating time-limited invincibility with a hand on his partner's shoulder. Inside sits one person: the bound Balsamilco.

Kurapika lays out the unknown that decides everything: does the curse trigger on contest participation — sparing the boy — or on the Seed Urn ceremony, which the real Woble performed? A surge of Nen he half-sensed near the baby early on keeps the worst case live. The only sure source is Beyond himself, and asking is a trap.

Beyond's own plant renounces him: after the curse revelations, Bill proposes trapping his former master in a Moonlight Act contract, and floats the larger heresy — the Association uniting to stop the Succession Contest itself, break the curses, and raise the clean princes as a new era's symbols.

Pressed on whether she kept a lifeline, Oito reveals a relative at a post office in Yamato: coded letters without return addresses, answered with the address filled in, wholly off the record. Kurapika — thinking of the friends he trusts more than himself, Gon and Killua — swears the missing Woble will be protected.