Jack was honestly impressed by the enemy's movements. He had predicted the battle would be decided in a few minutes, but he revised his assessment.
Hatsu, the culmination of the Four Great Exercises, can be called the face of a Nen user. By looking at a Hatsu, one can understand that person's personality and the history they have walked. Jack was able to immediately understand why Velvet tried to create such an ability and how she was able to realize it.
Before she started her activities as an iTuber, Velvet had shown worldwide success as a figure skater. At the time, she was hailed as a genius skater who set numerous youngest-ever records in various competitions, but that was a story of the past. The episodes of her glory and downfall were famous on the internet.
While leading a smooth life as an athlete and demonstrating her talent to the fullest, she received a suspension from competitions. The reason was a positive reaction in a doping test. She claimed her innocence, but the punishment was never rescinded.
Then, after a long suspension period ended and she finally made her comeback, misfortune struck her again. A second positive doping reaction was detected, and she was expelled from the skating association. With this, it could be said that her life as an athlete was completely cut off.
Afterward, she attacked the then-chairman of the skating association and caused an assault incident that resulted in serious injuries requiring a month for full recovery. The media reported on the series of turmoils day and night, questioning Velvet's problematic behavior. Gossips denying her humanity flew about, and her private life began to be tracked by the press.
However, as things grew larger, new information came to light. It was the internal state of the corrupt skating association. The excessive concentration of power in the chairman's position and the accompanying illicit movement of money. And the unspoken custom where the chairman's favorite athletes were favored while those who were not were eliminated was rampant.
Taking the Velvet incident as a catalyst, internal whistleblows erupted one after another. Regarding the doping matter as well, there were several athletes who had received similar punishments and were expelled in the past, and based on their testimonies, suspicion grew that the association side had intentionally fabricated the results.
In a reversal, Velvet was transformed from a delinquent girl into a tragic heroine. While it was her fault for causing the assault incident, there were many who sympathized with the fact that a sensitive teenage girl had been pushed that far, and voices calling for her return as an athlete also rose.
But in the end, she never returned to the public stage. On the contrary, having become a controversial iTuber, she was doing the same kind of things as the frivolous media that could be called one of the factors that ruined her life.
Jack could not know what led her to choose her current path. It was a state of mind that probably no one except her herself could understand. Distrust, anger, disappointment. At the end of a state where various thoughts were mixed together, there was the current her. And that was also the driving force of her Nen.
In Velvet's flowing glide, the beauty of figure skating, where even artistry could be glimpsed, was expressed. Feats as a sport, such as turns and jumps, were sublimated into combat techniques and used perfectly. There was strength backed by past experience.
But that wasn't only true for her. Jack also had a background that only he possessed. Although he was initially close to being overwhelmed, he had already regained his pace as a professional soldier who had experienced numerous actual battles.
Jack's ability 'Baksheesh' was a Manipulation-type Hatsu that used a turban as a weapon. Its appearance was comical, but its ability was peerlessly powerful. Besides its performance as a simple weapon, it had a special effect imbued within it.
This turban was a looted item from a royal tomb originating from the ancient Egypusha Dynasty; more accurately, it was a genuine cursed object woven from bandages stripped from a king's mummy. It was imbued with 'Nen that becomes stronger after death,' which wishes for resurrection after death and curses insolent people who disturb the sleep of the dead. Items like this normally cannot be handled by people without a connection, but there are rare cases where someone is compatible and can master them.
The effect was to absorb the aura of a touched enemy and increase the turban's strength. The more the enemy reinforced themselves with strong aura, the more the turban sucked it up, increasing its strength and binding force.
This turban could not be destroyed by brute force. Rather, the effective countermeasure was to enter a state of 'Zetsu' and cut off the reinforcement by aura. However, he was also prepared in that regard. Even without sucking up the enemy's aura, Jack himself could imbue aura to strengthen the turban. In a state of Zetsu, there was no way to escape the restraint anyway.
An absolute restraint that one could not escape once caught. It didn't lose ground even in one-versus-many combat, and was Jack's specialty that had suppressed many battlefields. He calmly grasped the current situation while manipulating several cloth serpents simultaneously.
Jack initially was most wary of the professional Hunter, Blade, and aimed to neutralize him as a priority. And though he succeeded in the restraint, the turban was cut by Velvet. However, as long as Blade didn't release his physical reinforcement, the turban would continue to maintain its strength by sucking his aura.
However, since the turban restraining Blade had been cut away from the user, Jack, he could no longer manipulate it or apply further reinforcement himself. In other words, if Blade entered a state of Zetsu, it would return to being just cloth, and he could easily escape.
But for now, it seemed Blade hadn't realized that trick. He was fuming and trying to break the restraint with all his might. Even if he escaped, Jack could just catch him again. A typical Reinforcement-type user like Blade was an easy opponent for Jack.
He didn't feel much threat from the two iTubers nearby, Noah and Six. Since they were Nen users, he wasn't neglecting caution, but he could tell at a glance that both were amateurs.
The remaining opponent was Velvet. Jack gnashed his teeth. That frustration wasn't directed at Velvet, but was irritation at himself.
The period when he was throwing himself into war was seven years ago. Since then, he had been living away from actual combat. Although he hadn't neglected his Nen training, he could sense that his combat instincts had clearly dulled. He was only able to display a level of strength far from his peak.
Even so, the current situation couldn't be called being cornered to the point of struggle. For Jack, defeating Velvet herself wasn't that difficult.
The reason their battle looked like a stalemate was precisely because they were continuing their offense and defense while maintaining safe zones. It was possible to break that balance. He just had to suppress her with a quantity of cloth serpents that Velvet couldn't handle.
However, if he did that, he would significantly damage the turban, which was an irreplaceable weapon. Despite the fact that he might have to fight multiple Nen users from now on, it could lead to a significant decrease in his fighting strength.
Even so, Jack thought he should finish off Velvet early here. From her attitude that showed a sense of leisure, he suspected she might have a trump card or two. He would let her cut his flesh to saw through her bone before she did anything unnecessary.
But just as Jack was about to move to the offensive, Velvet took something out from her waist. It was a 500ml plastic bottle. Keeping her graceful footwork as it was, she opened the cap of the plastic bottle while dodging Jack's attacks.
The liquid inside instantly became pebbles of ice on top of Velvet's hand. She threw them toward Jack.
He could tell it was an ice bullet imbued with quite a bit of aura and power. But it was meaningless if it didn't hit. Jack wasn't even particularly surprised. The swarm of cloth serpents, which had become both offense and defense in one, easily batted the ice bullets away.
She transformed aura into cold air and used that to create ice. It was surely a great ability that others couldn't mimic, but everything has a limit. Considering that Velvet brought water with her, it could be inferred that she couldn't make ice if she didn't have the liquid to freeze. It wasn't powerful enough to suddenly create a block of ice in the middle of empty air.
And no matter how much of a genius at skating she was, it seemed she didn't possess a talent for baseball. The throwing of ice bullets from an unnatural posture while gliding didn't even have proper control. It appeared to be a desperate attack.
"Phew... I'm tired. Is it okay if I take a little break?"
Despite that, she had this leisure. In the end, she started drinking the remaining water from the plastic bottle that could have been a means of attack. What was she planning?
"By the way, did you know? I heard that an international soccer tournament is held at this stadium once a year."
"...You seem to have the leisure to talk about unnecessary things."
"No, I think it's something quite relevant, you know?"
Immediately after, the air changed around Velvet. That was something that could be felt directly by the skin without even looking at aura. Immense cold air was gushing out.
"Maximum output, 'Cool Down'."
Extreme cold air robbed the surrounding area of heat. The rapid drop in temperature caused muscles to contract and made body movements stiff. Even for a Nen user, staying in such cold for a long time would greatly consume physical strength. It was an attack that suggested Velvet was getting serious.
But that was only if one continued to be hit by the cold air for a long time. Even if his movements became slightly sluggish, Jack's attacks were based on the manipulation of cloth serpents, so there was no problem. Furthermore, fortunately, the Santa costume he happened to be wearing had high cold resistance.
And Jack was convinced that this cold air emission wouldn't last long. There was no way such a massive amount of aura could continue to be consumed for a long time. Therefore, it wouldn't be a long battle. She would surely come to settle it all at once here.
His defense wasn't so soft that it could be broken even if she devised a few tactics. Jack would just meet Velvet, who was rolling into the snake's den, head-on.
But the thing that attacked the waiting Jack was something else. It poured down on his body, soaking his clothes damply.
"...Why is there water...!?"
Suddenly, a large amount of water gushed out from the ground. Its source was the impact point of the ice bullets Velvet had thrown. The ice bullets that missed Jack and embedded themselves in the ground had destroyed the water supply pipes underneath.
In this stadium where artificial turf spread across the surface, numerous automatic sprinklers were installed underground to adjust the pitch conditions for soccer matches. The piping for them had been laid out.
Jack's body, covered in water, began to freeze. He was attacked by a coldness that was incomparable to before.
"Don't mock me! Something like this...!"
He hadn't trained so softly that he would flinch at something like this. Even if it was called frozen, it was just the water on the surface being frozen. He hadn't been frozen to the core of his body, and there wasn't much damage.
However, Jack had taken his eyes off her. Where was Velvet, who was racing across the ice at high speed, running now? In the moment he was distracted, her figure was in the air above Jack.
'Pride Rail: Snow Cone'
Velvet fell from directly above Jack while delivering a kick. Furthermore, a high-speed figure skating spin was added to it. Together with her body, the edge at the tip of her foot was rotating like a drill. Slicing, freezing, and leveling became one, repeated in an instant while rotating.
Jack's feet were in a state where he couldn't move due to the frozen ice. He could forcibly shake it off, but Velvet's attack would reach him in that gap. He couldn't dodge. He spread the tentacles of the turban to catch Velvet.
The turban was scraped away in no time. From the contact point of the kick, two rails extended into the air as if drawing a spiral trajectory. Jack could not control the turban. It was wound up as if pasta were being wound around a fork, and it was shredded into small pieces.
"I-Impossible... To think... in a place... like... this...!"
Velvet's momentum did not stop. Jack endured with all his might, but that time didn't last long either.