The closer Kurapika got, the more he found himself shrinking back.
He was afraid he would hear something from nii-san Ronin that he didn't want to hear. And he found Ronin's bright smile on the posters painfully glaring.
After reaching the 50th floor, he heard the news that Ronin had once again won with crushing strength.
But that same overwhelming power hadn't stopped the Phantom Troupe from slaughtering the Kurta—and that inevitably stirred a trace of resentment in Kurapika's heart.
Then reason told him: maybe nii-san Ronin, just like him, hadn't been in the village at the time.
Cruel scenes from the village flashed through Kurapika's mind again and again. And he began to feel grateful that Ronin hadn't been there—otherwise the death count might've been 128 bodies.
Maybe nii-san Ronin was so absorbed in Heavens Arena that he still didn't know the Kurta had been massacred.
If that was the case… then he—the one bringing this cruel news—
Kurapika fell completely into a spiral of internal turmoil, tears unconsciously spilling from his eyes.
Could nii-san Ronin become someone he could lean on?
No.
He had to grow up himself.
He had to avenge the clan—he had to kill every single one of the monsters who had butchered them.
…
Ronin had no idea Kurapika was here.
Right now, he and Milia were in the private dining room they'd reserved. The waiter had already served all the dishes.
They ate as they talked.
"You want to rely on a combat boost to fight the Phantom Troupe?" Milia cut her steak with practiced elegance.
"Yes." Ronin was blunt. "With my current aura pool and my control of Nen, it's not enough for me to beat a Phantom Troupe member on the ring."
He had a plan for his Nen development.
At the moment, he was still in the stage of training the fundamentals—among the Four Major Principles, he was only practicing Ten, Zetsu, and Ren.
The most important part—Hatsu, his "finishing move"—he hadn't started creating yet.
As an Enhancer, he had excellent reference models:
Chairman Netero—and adult Gon.
Netero pursued the ultimate peak of martial arts, merging gratitude with punching, reinforcing it to the extreme, until it became his unique ability: 100-Type Guanyin Bodhisattva.
Gon, meanwhile, took the charge-and-release concept of Rock–Paper–Scissors and reinforced it to an extreme, creating a terrifying one-hit-kill effect.
And there were other paths too—Uvogin's route of pushing the body itself to an extreme, or Komugi's route of pushing board-game skill to an extreme.
In the end, it came down to one thing: all the strongest shared a single trait—they specialized and reinforced one focus to the limit.
Right now, Ronin was still accumulating and thinking—searching for his own path of focused reinforcement.
He wasn't in a hurry. He'd only just awakened Nen, and he had plenty of time to broaden his horizons, understand himself, and confirm his future direction.
Especially since he also had ninjutsu and the Sharingan as a final safety net—he had even more reason to be careful with the road he chose.
So if he wanted to fight Uvogin on the ring without using ninjutsu, Milia—this convenient external force that had practically walked into his hands—was the best option.
Milia took a bite of steak, then looked at Ronin seriously.
"I can lend you my aura."
"Conditions," Ronin said calmly.
A small black demon with bat-like wings silently appeared behind Milia.
It was very abstract—almost like a doodle come to life. And when it appeared, Milia's face reddened slightly, as if she felt embarrassed.
But she still explained, "It's a Lease Devil. How much aura you borrow, and when you'll use it, will be written into a leasing contract. After both sides sign and confirm it, the Lease Devil will follow you until you return the borrowed aura. Only then will it disappear.
And if the repayment deadline arrives and you still haven't returned what you borrowed, the Lease Devil will forcibly extract your aura to repay me."
As she spoke, a contract appeared in Milia's hand.
"The contract includes interest." Milia slid it across the table and explained further. "When you use my aura, you pay 5% of the total borrowed amount per minute as interest. And if the Lease Devil determines you can't repay, it will quickly drain whatever aura you have left and prioritize returning it to me."
Ronin took the contract and asked the question on his mind:
"By your description, you can lend me more than three times—maybe even five times—my own aura?"
"Yes." Milia nodded seriously. "That was my earlier numerical estimate of your aura capacity. But after you came back from the Ochima Federation, the amount I can lend you is no longer three times your capacity—though I can still manage about double.
But if you borrow double and you can't finish the fight within ten minutes, the Lease Devil will likely decide you can't repay and drain you down to a state where you can barely stay alive—before you've even beaten your opponent."
"So… your strength is above mine?" Ronin looked surprised.
Milia usually didn't give him much pressure at all. If what she said was true, she really had been hiding her depth.
"You can think of it that way." Milia pushed up her glasses. "Oh, and I forgot to mention—I used to be a Floor Master for a while."
"After lending aura, do you enter Zetsu?" Ronin asked curiously.
Milia adjusted her glasses again. "If you borrow too much, I might enter Zetsu—assuming you don't end up unable to pay. So? Want to borrow?"
Ronin nodded, acknowledging the logic.
If safety wasn't guaranteed, lending aura carried risk.
And Ronin was also thinking about something else: if he borrowed aura from Milia, then killed Milia, would the Lease Devil keep collecting interest… or what?
If he didn't understand the Lease Devil fully, attacking Milia would be a foolish choice. In fact, protecting Milia might be the correct move.
"I want to ask one more thing," Ronin said, not handing the contract back yet. "If we quantify my total aura, roughly how much is it?"
Borrowing aura from Milia carried risk.
But compared to the potential payoff, it was a risk within the range he could consider.
And now it seemed Milia had approached him in the first place precisely because he'd shown Enhancer potential.
Her aura-leasing ability was clearly far more tempting to Enhancers—because only Enhancers could turn that much borrowed aura into raw, explosive output most effectively.
As for what Milia got out of it, it was simple:
Interest.