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020 HxH: Tombbound Power
🕑 Added 2024-10-06 10:29:11 +0000 UTCShizuku shook the envelope in her hand, noticing how little money was inside, and couldn't help but mutter,
"Stingy."
"Ahem, little sister, whether you win or lose on the first floor, the bonus is only 152 Jenny. But if you win on the 50th floor, where you're headed, you'll earn a 50,000 Jenny bonus!
The rewards increase as you climb. On the 100th floor, the bonus is 1 million Jenny, and on the 150th, it's 10 million! Of course, these rewards only apply if you win, if you lose the next match, you won't receive anything."
In the elevator, the attendant in her Heavens Arena uniform kindly explained this to Shizuku.
"I see, thank you."
Shizuku responded, but her gratitude was as mechanical as a programmed response, devoid of any real emotion. Growing up in the streets of Meteor City, saying "thank you" felt as unnatural to her as going without food or water.
The elevator attendant recognized this but didn't take offense. She simply curled her lips and turned away.
Ronnel, on the other hand, observed her a bit longer before looking away.
"Not bad. She's stronger than I was when I first left the streets of Meteor City."
After briefly comparing their strengths, Ron made this mental evaluation.
It wasn't strange for Ronnel to think the elevator attendant had such strength. Being a beautiful young woman working at Heavens Arena, she undoubtedly encountered powerful but unruly contestants regularly, along with all kinds of tough, unreasonable, or even perverted individuals.
Without strong abilities, she would've met a tragic fate long ago, given how many people might take advantage of her.
"Ding~"
"Good luck with your challenge," the attendant said with a professional smile, watching Ron and Shizuku exit before the doors closed again.
"Fifty floors? Let's keep going, Shizuku."
"Mm-hmm."
Three days passed in the blink of an eye.
In those three days, Ronnel and Shizuku quickly became known in the arena. They consistently defeated their opponents in a single move, making repeated appearances on Heavens Arena's TV broadcasts.
Boom!
A black-clad boxer fell to the ground, clutching his throat, his life slipping away after Ron had struck. The light in his eyes faded slowly.
"Ronnel, you've made it to the 190th floor!"
After the referee made his announcement, the crowd erupted into cheers and applause.
At the entrance of a nearby auditorium, a petite girl with pinkish-purple hair stood silently, observing the match with a cold, indifferent gaze.
Despite having seen it multiple times, the scene where Ronnel casually waved his arm, causing his opponent's expression to settle into a peaceful, almost serene calmness, still made the girl's eyebrows twitch.
"To make a corpse look like that... it's almost like an ability to dispel Nen?"
The girl muttered to herself, her icy voice lacking any emotion or flair.
"And his partner... she's not ordinary either."
Jinglinglingjinglingling
A phone call interrupted her thoughts.
"Hello?"
"Machi, we're done. We've arrived at Heavens Arena."
"I see. I've already found them. They're staying in the same room—room number..."
As Machi, the purple-haired girl, spoke on the phone, Ronnel was walking off the stage, having just extracted a couple of high-level attack and defense skills, along with mid-tier strength, from his latest opponent.
The further they advanced, the stronger their opponents became. With that, the rewards Ronnel claimed from their fallen enemies increased as well.
Besides gathering what he could from the bodies in the ring, Ronnel had been making nightly visits to the morgue. He'd learned that not all the corpses made it there, though. Some were simply thrown into a nearby garbage shredder by the cleaners.
So, whenever he could, Ron would loot the bodies first.
Three days and nights of scavenging corpses yielded quite a haul. By luck, Ronnel even managed to find a few Nen users' remains, from which he absorbed substantial amounts of pure Nen. His growth in power was rapid enough to make Shizuku feel uneasy.
"You're almost dangerous now," Shizuku had remarked.
Ronnel's strength now stood roughly equal to Shizuku's. After spending time honing and testing his abilities, Ronnel confirmed that Nen users' corpses provided the most valuable rewards. At the very least, he could always extract pure Nen.
But it wasn't until Ronnel extracted a Nen ability from one such corpse that he realized just how terrifying his own ability truly was!
