The Succession Contest

Kurapika serves as bodyguard to the infant Fourteenth Prince Woble and Queen Oito — a posting he took because a pair of Scarlet Eyes is held by the Fourth Prince. He promises Oito they will look for a way to avoid the succession battle altogether.

Five tiers, royal family on top, steerage below; martial law throughout; phone lines and corridors military-controlled; the Tier 2/3 bulkhead openable only from above. Balsamilco tells Benjamin's soldiers the first two tiers are the contest's only 'hunting grounds' and holds 'Operation Assault' in reserve.

Kurapika senses a burst of aura from the infant's cradle and turns to find nothing. The first hint that something invisible already lives with the Fourteenth Prince.

Two hundred thousand passengers leave port on a two-month voyage: three weeks in known waters, five in uncharted seas. The moment the gangways lift, the contest's arena is sealed — no prince leaves until landfall.

Kurapika tells everyone in Room 1014 what only the royal guards knew: the voyage is a war of heirs. The seven royal guards, he reveals, were chosen by the seven higher queens to spy on Oito — protection contingent on their clients' interests.

Multiple parasitic Nen beasts manifest in Woble's quarters, visible to Nen users and no one else. The princes themselves do not know the creatures exist.

Kurapika gives his name over the ship's emergency channels and announces that Nen beasts have appeared in his quarters — deliberately detonating the contest's secrecy to force every camp onto the same uncertain footing.

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 reader learns the small beast that puppeted Sayird belongs to Prince Momoze — a girl whose guardian kills for her without her knowledge or consent.

The Ninth Prince, whose bow-armed Guardian Spirit Beast is revealed this chapter, tells his father he wants out of the succession battle. Nasubi's answer — 'do as you wish' — commits him to a contest that has no exit clause.

The Fifth Prince forms an alliance with the Fourth — chemistry and depravity shaking hands — while the elder princes' Guardian Spirit Beasts are shown to the reader for the first time.

A working rule of the system emerges: Guardian Spirit Beasts do not kill each other and do not directly attack other beasts' hosts. The war they enable must be fought through humans.

Benjamin's opening plan — kill Tserriednich first — is shelved on Balsamilco's advice: Benjamin cannot see the beasts, and Kurapika's broadcast burned the assault's surprise. Instead Benjamin's soldiers will embed as rival princes' guards, report everything, and hold license to kill 'in self-defense.'

The Third Prince is briefed on Room 1014's losses and the existence of Nen beasts — news to him and his entire guard corps. Nasubi, meanwhile, remarks that even interpreting the 'sole survivor' rule is part of the contest.

Shimano routes the switchboard to Zhang Lei against Kurapika's instructions — and it pays off. The Third Prince offers a truce for information; Kurapika explains Nen basics and reveals the beasts were seeded at the Seed Urn ceremony. Benjamin, kept waiting, hangs up.

The Fifth Prince offers her own truce in exchange for beast intelligence; her captain Maor gives Kurapika one hour to resolve the Benjamin-soldier problem before visiting. Room 1014's information is now the block's most liquid currency.

The Third Prince sends two personal guards to reinforce Room 1014 until the next banquet — with Benjamin's observer Coventoba staying at his side and Queen Duazul's Slakka tagging along on First Queen Unma's orders. Every gift comes chaperoned.

Camilla plans to kill Benjamin first, then Halkenburg, and orders her mother to get close to the Ninth. Benjamin's soldier Musse eavesdrops and plans to secure physical proof with his ability, Secret Window.

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 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.

Hanzo discovers Marayam's quarters deserted, occupied only by a smaller, more sinister copy of the prince's dragon beast. The Thirteenth Prince's household has been swallowed by something.

Camilla leaves her quarters for Benjamin's, telling Musse to cooperate or die. The first direct prince-on-prince strike of the contest is in motion.

Cornered into Camilla's assassination run, Musse shoots and kills the Second Prince. Her counteractive ability Cat's Name revives her at the cost of her killer's life: Musse dies on the spot, and Camilla orders his belongings burned.

Killing one of Unma's reassigned guards on the way, Camilla walks into Benjamin's quarters and shoots him. He refuses to strike back — retaliation is what her ability wants — and has her arrested instead.

Benjamin's own ability is revealed: he inherits the Nen abilities of loyal soldiers who die under his command. Vincent's Air Blow and Musse's Secret Window already sit as stars in his palm — every posted observer is also a premium collected on death.

Benjamin's soldier Rihan reveals Predator: from deliberate ignorance, he analyzes a target ability and conjures its natural predator. He designates Salé-salé's smoke-charming Guardian Spirit Beast — the first move in a quiet beast-hunting program.

The Third Prince's beast ejects another coin stamped '1'. Benjamin's observer Coventoba — who secretly pocketed the first — is the only person who knows there are two.

Benjamin's observers file reports: Tyson's 'eye-wogs' harvest aura from readers of her book, Tubeppa's beast brews drugs with a partner, Luzurus's sets desire-shaped traps, Halkenburg's enhances a fellowship's Nen. Shikaku, assigned to Halkenburg, suspects memory revision and requests backup.

Biscuit drops her disguise to demonstrate Nen to the disbelieving Vergei, who signs on as her student. The Hunters inside Room 1013 deduce they are in a one-way Nen space copied from the real room — almost certainly the work of Marayam's beast, protecting by imprisoning.

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.

Rihan confirms the smoke beast's dictatorship mechanics — maximum devotion in close associates within hours — then summons Predator, which consumes the Guardian Spirit Beast whole. Drained for 48 hours, he swaps posts with Yushohi, whose Nen is 'most suitable for assassinations.'

Four days of letters lowered the guards' vigilance; Halkenburg and five guards draw on them and he walks to his father demanding the contest's suspension. His bullet freezes mid-air before Nasubi's face — the king cannot die until the ritual ends. Turning the gun on himself, Halkenburg's own beast catches the round.

With the Eighth Prince's beast already devoured, Yushohi completes the kill: Salé-salé stops breathing in his bed as attendants scream for help, and Yushohi radios Benjamin that the mission succeeded. Officially, illness.

As the lifeboat nears open water a horde of hands closes in — leaving the ship means death for a contest participant. Kacho pushes her sister through a door back aboard; a 'Kacho' follows moments later, and the real one drifts out to sea, dead in the boat. Her formless beast, Without You, now wears her shape to protect the living twin.

The Fifth Prince reasons from the missed banquet performance that her brother was killed, and from the soldier rotation that she is Benjamin's next target. She starts building countermeasures and concludes she needs a partner like Kurapika.

Camilla elevated Kakin's casteless Have-Nots into her personal army, and they revived the old 'afterlife companion' rite as Nen: eleven curse-bearers, one per surviving rival prince, each carrying a token of their target and strengthening the curse daily — strongest if they die by suicide close to the target's eyes.

With the twins in custody and beasts shielding most princes, the captain of Camilla's guard volunteers for the hardest target list: she will attend Kurapika's next round of classes and curse the Fourteenth Prince from inside Room 1014.

The coin Benjamin's observer secretly pocketed on day one changes value. Zhang Lei's beast is running a compounding scheme nobody yet understands — including the thief holding its seed capital.

The Third Prince visits Onior in person, asking after the beasts and Nen. The Second-track Faker knows nothing himself but promises to ask his younger members — the succession contest and the mafia formally shake hands.

Longhi lifts her tongue to show a sealed curse — malevolent Nen set to release on her death, unpurgeable, planted by her own father. She and her half-sister Makaha are two of ten 'strong curse sacrifices'; the targets, she believes, are the princes. Beyond has been rigging the succession contest since before it existed.

Longhi rejects Kurapika's Benjamin theory: her greedy father would not spend decades of preparation on someone unrelated. Oito confirms the loophole — eligibility requires only being a 'child of a legal wife' of Nasubi. Longhi's contract condition follows: find Beyond's child among the princes. Her true plan: kill them herself.

Tenftory relays the deal to Zhang Lei: if he, Tubeppa, and Woble are the last three standing, the other two renounce the throne in his favor — in writing — in exchange for Sakata and Hashito's indefinite support. A partial-surrender framework nobody is sure the ritual even permits.

Invited to Room 1003, Kurapika reads Zhang Lei's beast as a cumulative Conjurer: coins stored long enough compound toward 10^64, at which point holders' nodes open unaided — a king's mint for mass-producing Nen users after coronation. He keeps the pseudo-coercive loyalty implication, and Coventoba's theft, to himself.

Poisoned with TSK-17 by his own possessed hand, Halkenburg's body fails despite resuscitation as day twelve begins. Benjamin dictates a stately funeral — procession, send-off, guards as pallbearers — believing his order to Balsamilco was simply carried out. 'Balsamilco' thanks his brother, privately.

Amid the funeral crowds, Chrollo reveals his real prize: the Seed Urn, the Lotus Anchorite, and the Sword of Good Omens — the ritual engine of Kakin's prosperity, surely kept on Tier 1. Stealing something of national-treasure grade would evolve Skill Hunter into the weapon he needs to finish Hisoka for good.

In Room 302, Camilla's captain paints on a new face, dons a maid's uniform, and joins the Nen class to curse Woble: a week's accumulation from a distance, five days with something Woble has used, instant if she can die looking into the prince's eyes. Room 1014 sees only a servant.

Kurapika lectures the class on why only one heir may survive: a vow-and-limitation engine in four stages — the prayer and pledge, the offering of the king's own bloodline, the ceremonial gathering of the fallen into a sacred convergence, and rule through the resulting power. The deliberately-left loophole: more than one survivor breaks the ritual.

Closing the lecture, Kurapika announces to every camp's observers that the Fourteenth Prince is not eligible to participate in the Succession Contest. In the bedroom, Oito lies awake, eyes open. The gambit lands one chapter before the reader learns what it rests on.

Flashback, two days earlier: Bill catches Oito alternating masculine and feminine pronunciations of 'Woble' — the same distinction as Shimanu/Shimano. Under the Dowsing Chain, Oito admits the baby aboard is a boy, her younger sister's son. Her real daughter Woble, who underwent the Seed Urn ceremony, is off-ship with the sister, location unknown even to Oito.

Priests carry Halkenburg's casket through a hidden door in Nasubi's quarters into the Princes' Burial Chamber, laying him between Salé-salé and Kacho. His fireplace stays dark where his siblings' 'Flames of Life' burn — and Nasubi states it plainly: as long as the soul lives in a body, the right of succession stands. Halkenburg is still fighting.

Citing a Tserriednich–Halkenburg conspiracy, Benjamin schedules Special Martial Law for 2:15 p.m.: rival princes' guards executed on sight (Hunter Association members exempt), princes assembled in Room 1001, the 'Grand Hall,' by 2:30. His private goal: merge with his Guardian Spirit Beast's ability and transcend kingship — to watch over Kakin as a god.