Jon leapt high into the air and landed back on the deck with a twisting spin.
"King Crimson—delete Time."
The world turned gray.
Time skipped like a broken reel. Through Epitaph, Jon had already foreseen what the pirates would do. He summoned Stone Free, and countless threads shot out, latching onto six pirates like puppet strings.
Four seconds passed.
He was no longer clumsy with time erasure. His body and mind were syncing with the sensation, the void between seconds becoming more familiar. The time he could delete was growing.
But four seconds wasn't his limit.
Jon could now erase up to five seconds of time.
He believed that, once he unlocked Nen and trained further, he might one day match Diavolo's ten-second domain—likely even surpass it by quite a bit.
But for now, five seconds was all he had.
As the fifth second struck, the pirates blinked back into reality. One of them locked eyes with Jon, his face contorted in confusion.
"That monster again?! Didn't he vanish?!"
His hands moved on instinct. He raised his gun.
To the pirates, Jon wasn't the same as the other prisoners. The prisoners were weak, unarmed, and could be suppressed easily with firepower. But Jon? He was a walking nightmare—he teleported across the ship, killed their captain instantly, and now he stood there again, untouched.
The pressure on the prisoners lightened.
With Jon present, the battlefield was changing.
The pirates aimed, ready to fire—But Jon moved first.
"Ripple Breathing!"
Golden energy crackled like lightning through the threads. It surged into the five connected pirates.
In an instant, they convulsed, their bodies twisting mid-step.
They collapsed—not just as casualties, but as shields, their falling forms blocking the others' lines of fire.
Worse, before falling, they turned their guns and—like possessed husks—fired into their own ranks.
Caught completely off-guard, over a dozen pirates were gunned down by their own comrades, including the five Jon had just controlled.
"You bastard! That demon warlock—he's controlling our brothers! Kill him!" one pirate howled.
There was no retreat.
Not now.
They were already being hunted. A bounty hunter's ship was drawing near. If they couldn't hold the deck, they were doomed. They could swim, sure—but no one could outswim a ship.
This wasn't just a battle—it was a last stand.
Failure meant death.
Their eyes were wild, their faces twisted by fear and desperation.
The pirates opened fire again, but Jon was faster.
Thanks to Epitaph, he anticipated every shot. Most bullets missed entirely. The few that did come close were either deflected by Stone Free's threads or absorbed by Ripple-charged barriers.
Previously, Jon had avoided direct confrontation due to the overwhelming number of pirates and their wide area of attack. But now?
Their numbers had thinned. Their firepower was fragmented.
Now, he could face them head-on.
Bullets clanged and sparked against Stone Free's threads and Ripple-infused air.
Jon charged forward like a phantom. Not a single shot landed.
To the pirates, it looked as if a wall of light moved with him—every bullet melted away the moment it touched him.
"How can humans… defeat monsters like this?"
Another pirate dropped to his knees in despair.
The only one left with fight in him was the first mate. Snarling, he charged with a raised cutlass.
His killing intent locked onto Jon.
No time to dodge.
King Crimson was still on cooldown.
Jon's blood surged.
He didn't retreat—he struck back.
"Stone Free!"
The Stand caught the blade between its hands.
Jon followed up with a brutal kick—crack!—shattering the man's leg and bringing him down in a heap.
The first mate collapsed, defeated.
Jon exhaled. "Phew... finally over."
But then—
"Don't come any closer! Let me go or I'll kill her!"
Jon's eyes snapped toward the voice.
Lindsay was being held hostage, a trembling pirate pressing a pistol to her temple.
The man's eyes were bloodshot, his hand shaking, but the intent was real.
"Bastard! Let's see how arrogant you are now!"
Jon's fury surged. His jaw clenched.
"Don't come any closer, you bastards!" the pirate shouted, voice shrill with panic.
Jon suddenly felt a strange resistance in his limbs—just for a moment—before his body responded again. He regained control, exhaling slowly, eyes locked onto the desperate man ahead.
The pirate was a wreck—blood smeared across his face, nose broken, teeth shattered. His chest heaved as he held Lindsay hostage, gun trembling at her temple. His eyes twitched with fear and madness.
But Jon… Jon didn't flinch.
He took a step forward, then another. No Time Erasure. No Stone Free. Just him, walking—slowly, deliberately—toward the pirate.
"Stop! I said don't move!" the pirate yelled, panic rising with each of Jon's calm steps.
Jon met his gaze with a chilling flatness. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'll shoot!" the pirate screamed, his voice cracking.
But Jon didn't stop.
The pirate's hands shook uncontrollably now. He had been betting that Jon cared about the girl, that maybe they were close. That maybe this monster in human skin had some human feeling left.
But Jon's cold indifference shattered that illusion.
"You were defeated the moment you pulled the trigger," Jon said softly. His hand raised—one finger pointing at the pirate like a judge passing sentence.
The pirate stumbled back. "W-What are you saying!?"
Jon kicked a dagger lying on the ground, sending it flipping into the air in a lazy arc.
The pirate's mind snapped. If he was going to die, he would take someone with him.
He pulled the trigger.
The gun fired. Lindsay's head snapped back. Blood sprayed.
She collapsed to the deck with a dull thud, unmoving.
The pirate turned the gun toward the others—but an examinee nearby had already acted. With shaky hands and burning urgency, they fired.
Bang! Bang!
The shots were scattered, but one found its mark—right between the pirate's eyes.
He staggered back, dead on his feet.
Then the dagger Jon kicked came down—shk!—piercing straight into the pirate's neck. Blood erupted as he twitched violently, then fell limp. A growing red pool spread beneath his body.
Jon walked over to Lindsay's motionless form and squatted beside her. Without a word, he slapped her cheek.
Nothing.
"Don't desecrate the dead!" an outraged examinee shouted.
Jon ignored him. Slap.
"Ow! That—that hurt!" Lindsay suddenly sat up, rubbing her cheek. Jon looked back at the others, unbothered.
Lindsay wasn't dead.
Everyone stared in disbelief. She'd been shot in the head. Blood had splattered. They had all seen it.
Lindsay, confused, touched her temple.
No wound. No hole. No pain.
She rubbed at the blood on her face, brought her fingers to her nose.
Sniffed.
"…Tomato juice?"
Jon stood. "Looks like someone swapped the bullet."
He turned to a man who had fought back earlier, a lean figure who'd moved just a bit too smoothly.
"Are you an examiner?" Jon asked.
"What? No, I'm just a regular hostage—" the man started.
Jon's stare cut him off. "Don't lie. I saw what you did."
The man was silent. Everyone waited. After a moment, he sighed. "Fine. You got me."
Another survivor chimed in, "Wait… everyone's still alive?"
They checked, one by one. Prisoners who had looked unconscious stirred awake. No one was dead.
Jon's eyes stayed on the thin man.
"So?" the man asked. "How did you figure it out?"
"I thought it was your ability," Jon replied, genuinely puzzled.
The thin man blinked. "Wait… it wasn't yours?"
Just then, bounty hunters swarmed aboard the ship, subduing the remaining pirates. Jon watched as order slowly returned.
Later, Jon learned the truth: it had been a coordinated operation, sanctioned by the Hunter Association. The thin man's name was Chris. His Nen ability allowed him to transmute bullets into tomatoes and things. He couldn't affect blades, so a few had still been injured—but no one had died.
Luckily, most modern pirates had embraced firearms, not knives.
At the same time, tens of thousands of miles away…
Uvogin sat on the edge of a massive crater, knuckles bloodied, the remnants of his enemy strewn like scattered meat around him. He stared at his fist with an uncharacteristically blank expression.
"…Huh? That's weird." His voice was low.
"I didn't even throw my Big Bang Impact yet…"
He clenched his hand, rotating the wrist. It felt like he'd just hit something—but there was no memory of the strike, only the aftermath. The feeling lingered in his bones, like the recoil of a punch he hadn't thrown.
Uvogin squinted at the carnage again.
"Must've been some weird post-mortem Nen effect," he grunted. He cracked his neck, then stood, blood still dripping from his fingers. "Whatever. Dead's dead."
He walked off, unconcerned—but not entirely unbothered.
Elsewhere, in a dark library tucked beneath the earth…
Chrollo Lucifer flipped through the pages of Bandit's Secret, his brow furrowed. Moments ago, he had been preparing to steal an ability, when the book suddenly appeared open in his hands, the ability already bookmarked.
He looked down. His position had shifted slightly. A chair that had been across the room was now beside him.
He knew illusions. This was not one.
"…Time manipulation?" he muttered. "But not like Zeno's tricks…"
He closed the book, eyes sharp, posture tense. This was a power that broke causality—a threat even to him. His original target no longer mattered.
He vanished into the shadows.
In a high tower far above the clouds, a young prodigy of the Zodiacs stared at her test results—unchanged from moments before. But her teacup had moved from the table to the floor.
"…Did I… drop it?" she wondered aloud, though the cup wasn't broken.
She reviewed security footage on her laptop. The recording skipped. Five seconds missing.
She rewound again. Same skip.
Inside the Hunter Association's headquarters, a phone call clicked off.
"Chairman," the assistant called from behind the sliding door. "Are you alright?"
The ancient man sat cross-legged on his futon, traditional robes still and pressed. He stared into the space in front of him as if watching invisible threads unravel.
"I asked if anyone had gone to the Dark Continent recently," he murmured, stroking his long white beard.
"But… Chairman, the ban has held for years now."
He nodded absently.
"Then… who is it?" he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.
On Whale Island, a fisherman's rod suddenly snapped. Not from strain—but as if the line had cut across time itself and recoiled from something it couldn't grasp.
He looked around the calm waves, confused. His catch was gone.
"…Did I even cast the line?"
Somewhere deep in a ruined ruin, buried under centuries of dirt and ego...
A group of hired archaeologists stood frozen, glancing at each other with nervous expressions. A strange silence had fallen over the site—just a second or two where everything felt off. Tools clattered. Sand stopped shifting. A lantern had somehow moved ten feet from where it had been.
"What the hell just happened?" one muttered.
Inside a dimly lit chamber, Ging Freecss stood completely still, halfway through sketching an ancient symbol onto his notebook. His pencil hovered mid-air, then dropped the moment his perception caught up to the timeline again.
His eyes narrowed.
"Huh…" he whispered. "That's new."
He ran a hand through his messy hair, walking back to the spot he remembered standing just seconds before. His boots had clearly moved. The lines on the dusty floor—the ones he was using to triangulate energy flow through ancient Nen channels—were smudged in a way he wouldn't have allowed.
Ging grinned.
"Did someone just fast-forward me?"
He laughed to himself. Not from confusion, but from thrill. A genuine mystery had dropped into his lap—one even his instinct couldn't predict. That didn't happen often.