Hunter x Hunter: The Strongest Zoldyck

"Then I can chew you up and tear you apart piece by piece..."

"Then swallow it down, bite by bite, along with your bones..."

He paused here, his pale golden vertical pupils sweeping over the crowd, a slight upward curve at the corner of his mouth:

"Believe me... you don't want to experience that feeling."

"What exactly do you want?"

As the two figures reflected in his eyes slowly collapsed, Roy finally couldn't hold back and questioned them somewhat indignantly:

Why toy with them like this?

"play?"

"No...no...you might have misunderstood. I wasn't playing around; I was just adding some flavor to the food."

"Just like the seasonings and condiments you humans sprinkle on your food... your extreme emotions are like that to us."

"So... I wasn't toying with them, I was just... just... in..."

"Hmm...what are you doing?"

A hint of embarrassment appeared on Yumongad's face, as if he were searching for a reasonable explanation for his actions.

Lost in thought, his pale golden vertical pupils shifted slightly, scanning from Roy's face to Fika's, from Fika's face to Saen's face, and then from Saen's face to the pale face of the Kurta girl.

It is thinking...

It's not the logical deduction of human thinking, but a more primitive, more instinctive kind of thinking, like a wild animal sniffing out the wind.

"In..." Its lips moved, and its tongue licked behind its teeth, as if tasting the word that had not yet been spoken.

"...It's being pickled."

When it uttered this word, it carried a strange, awkward quality, like a child learning a new word for the first time.

Its lips curved slightly, not in a smile, but in satisfaction...

Like a chef who, after tasting a sip of soup, finally finds the missing ingredient.

"Yes, marinate." Yumongard repeated, his tone more certain than before.

"Before you humans eat meat, you marinate it with salt, sugar, soy sauce, and various spices, allowing those flavors to seep into the texture of the meat and into the bones, making the meat more tender, more fragrant, and more flavorful."

"We're the same... except our seasonings are different."

"We use fear, despair, anger, resentment... these extreme emotions as spices, and the longer and deeper they are suppressed in your hearts, the stronger the flavor will be..."

"And then, enveloped in these 'spices,' you naturally become even more delicious."

"But besides spices, the quality of ingredients is also very important to us, and the highest quality ingredients are those among you who are commonly known as 'enlightened beings'..."

As it spoke, its pale golden vertical pupils swept over Saen.

"Or perhaps you young and naive...."

Yumongad took a step forward, his pale, angry faces clearly reflected in his pale gold vertical pupils.

"But right now, you don't seem to be... delicious enough."

"Not delicious enough?"

Roy's right corner of his mouth curled up slightly, but it wasn't a smile; it was something colder than a smile.

He loosened his clenched fist, his fingers naturally spreading out and hanging at his sides, his silver-gray pupils coldly looking at Jumongaard, who had Bolt's face on top of his.

"So you want us to experience despair, pain, and resentment... until we become more delicious, and then you 'eat' us?"

Yumongaard tilted his head, his pale golden vertical pupils looking at Roy's pale, youthful face, which showed no trace of fear:

"You seem a little different... You have a scent of our kind, no, that's not right, not our kind, but the scent of the same environment."

"What are you talking about? What kind of people? What kind of environment?"

"Is this your way of 'seasoning'?"

Roy's mockery deepened, and his anger intensified.

He was now utterly enraged, furious at the mother and daughter who had been toyed with by Yumengaard, furious at Yumengaard for treating humans as food and emotions as seasoning...

But more than that... was an anger that even he himself could hardly understand...

It's the kind of anger that comes from prey daring to swagger in front of the hunter... in the hunter's territory!

That anger wasn't rage, it wasn't fury... it was anger born of humiliation!

How dare this lowly, spineless creature be so... presumptuous!

Right in front of me!

Uh-huh?!

What's wrong with me? How could I have such a crazy idea?

A feeling of arrogance and anger suddenly surfaced in Roy's mind like water without roots, causing him to momentarily forget his situation and become conceited...

"arrogant?"

Subconsciously, Roy began to chew those two words repeatedly.

Try to find the reason in your mind why you have this emotion.

As he searched, he actually found some clues.

It turns out that this thought of his didn't come from anywhere, but from the depths of his heart, from his subconscious, from his body that could unleash forty percent of its potential...

It comes from that gradually regressing ancestral body.....

With a barely perceptible contraction in his silver-gray pupils, Roy, relying on something akin to a wild animal's instinct, discovered the truth.

For the first time, he felt so clearly... that he was becoming something else.

Not a monster, not a beast, but a hunter.

It is the kind of hunter who stands at the top of the food chain, looking down on all living beings, and never doubts whether he can kill his prey.

This peculiar consciousness didn't seem to grow from his brain; it seemed to seep out from his bones, his muscles, and the genetic information deep within his body.

It was as if something older, more primitive, and more irrational than himself was awakening within him.

Huff... Huff... Huff!

Closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths, Roy gradually calmed down.

He secretly suppressed and gradually subdued the arrogant, almost conceited instinct that surged from the depths of his primal body.

He knew this power would make him stronger, but he also knew...

If he allows this "atavistic" emotion to consume his reason, he will become a monster like Jumongard.

They turned into monsters that only knew how to kill and destroy.

"But why does the lifting of physical restrictions involve these things?"

Lost in thought, Roy pondered again, unable to understand why the liberation of his physical body had brought about such a change.

After a moment of contemplation, he vaguely grasped the edge of the answer...

The liberation of the physical body is not only a liberation of power, but also a liberation of the monstrous instinct deeply ingrained in our genes—the instinct of monsters who struggle to survive on the edge of the dark continent, who live by hunting, and who regard everything that moves as prey or natural enemies.

Because the ancestors of humankind originally came from the Dark Continent...

These constraints and limitations within the body are simply to make humans human.