Ship Security Crisis

Mizaistom warns Kurapika that crime on Tiers 3–4 already outruns Kakin's preparations — a fraction of the needed clinics and doctors boarded — and that he and Botobai must reinforce ship security instead of attending Zodiac meetings.

Two hours into the voyage, Queen Sevanti orders Momoze's personal guards and servants transferred wholesale to her little brother Marayam — the child Sevanti judges worth saving. The Twelfth Prince is left with only the higher queens' spy-guards.

The contest claims its first prince on its first night: Momoze, stripped of her own guards by her mother's order, is strangled by an unknown figure. Her six remaining royal guards are detained for court-martial.

The royal army takes Loberry on suspicion of killing Barrigen, and the ship's supreme court sends an investigator to Room 1010 to probe Queen Seiko as an accomplice. The wrong people pay for the snake killings first.

The reader learns the Twelfth Prince was assassinated by her own detained guard Tuffdy, using the ability The Touch. Hanzo avenges her the same chapter, killing Tuffdy and staging it as suicide.

Kurapika tells Vergei that Room 1013 has been 'transported somewhere else' and names Tuffdy as Momoze's murderer. Vergei, contacting them from a room that no longer physically exists, rejects every request to check outside his own door.

Tried before the Supreme Magistrate over the deaths of Musse and Wolfe, both elder princes are confined to the VVIP area under monitoring until Musse is found — a search that cannot succeed, since Benjamin quietly watches Camilla through the dead man's Secret Window.

To skeptical Kakin officers, Mizaistom argues the Tier 3 murders are succession-driven: powers bought with human sacrifice will keep demanding it, and the under-policed lower decks will burn first. He urges redeploying soldiers downward.

Caught in a Tier 3 curfew sweep with Kalluto, Illumi tells Mizaistom plainly that every Troupe member is on the ship — then refuses to elaborate. Mizaistom weighs whether to burden Kurapika with the news.

A person with no ID turns up on Tier 3: the Eleventh Prince, off the royal deck through no corridor any camera saw. Mizaistom imposes a gag order and takes her into protective interrogation himself.

Mizaistom escorts Fugetsu back to Tier 1 under 72-hour monitoring, to be lifted before Sunday's banquet. Her teleportation is now known to the Hunters — and, through Yushohi's report, to Benjamin's camp.

Keeney's suicide note claims he acted alone, but several princes, understanding now what her flute can do, 'invite' Melody to their suites with pardons as leverage. The Bureau keeps her long precisely to keep her out of their hands.

Five ordinary soldiers on Tier 3 — Tserriednich's actual friends since academy days — piece together Nen, Morena, and their prince's silence from barracks gossip and Borksen's tip about Theta. They set up a transfer-request early-warning system for the coming purge.

Kaiser hands Steiner a panic device and explains the stakes: the Justice Bureau is the ship's last neutral institution, and the moment special martial law is declared it becomes a dictator's base — insurgents charged and executed within ten minutes. Steiner realizes he has just been designated the surviving witness.

The broadcast walks down the ship: Tier 3 civilians kneel against walls under shoot-to-kill orders; Tier 2 returns to rooms, hands visible; Tier 1 awaits military inspection. Borksen mines the announcement order for her position — and realizes the hideout hears every tier's broadcast.

Forty minutes into martial law, Benjamin walks into the Justice Bureau and informs Mizaistom, Botobai, and Kaiser that the government is now consolidated under military force, with the Bureau as his command center and the three of them as witnesses. His pretext: bio-terrorism 'orchestrated by Tserriednich and Halkenburg.'