Gourmet Hunter (HxH Fanfic)

Putting aside the strength of Uncle Bill and others, it is really unimaginable for Vincent to force them back with his strength alone.

While Law couldn't tell the depth of Uncle Bill and his companions, they gave him the feeling that they were stronger than the Elders of Meteor City.

Biscuit glanced at Atomu inconspicuously, only to see that he was looking at the palace in front of him that was full of ancient atmosphere, then quickly withdrew her gaze.

She has better vision than Law, and even without fighting anyone present, she could roughly rank their strengths.

For example, the Enhancer, Atomu, is undoubtedly ranked first, the second is the strangely dressed Luby, the third is Aya, the fourth is Uncle Bill, the fifth is Law, and the four people after that, including the dead Vincent, were all of similar strength.

Among them, Vincent is the weakest one.

This is Biscuit's personal assessment. However, if they were to truly engage in battle, taking various factors into account, Atomu would still hold first place, while Luby, Aya, Uncle Bill, and Law's rankings could shift.

In any case, Vincent was undeniably at the bottom. The idea that he could single-handedly force the others to retreat was simply impossible, yet their reactions suggested it really happened.

"Why did he suddenly attack you?" Biscuit asked curiously. She was more interested in whether Vincent's sudden surge in strength could be replicated, and if so, it was definitely something worth investigating.

Everyone looked at each other, they also wanted to know the answer to that question.

"Could it have been because of the sudden sound of a harp coming from the palace?" Luby hesitated.

'The sound of harp?' Law's eyes narrowed and he couldn't help but think of the Sonata of Darkness. The reason why he came to the ruins of Palo City was to find the solo harp piece of the Sonata of Darkness.

"If it was because of the sound of the harp, then we heard it too, but Vincent was the only one who reacted." Aya retorted.

"The sound of the harp was very weak, it appeared suddenly, and didn't last long. I didn't sense anything off about it." Someone also raised an objection.

Luby said: "But Vincent only went berserk after the sound disappeared."

"I can only say that this is a possibility. At that time, apart from the sound of the harp, there was indeed no other unusual movement. However, could the sound of the harp alone make Vincent suddenly become so strong?"

Uncle Bill adjusted his glasses, then looked towards the magnificent palace and said in a deep voice, "Besides, is this really Stargie's tomb?"

"Even if it's not Stargie's tomb, there must be a lot of valuables in it, right? Isn't it for the money that we want to enter Stargie's tomb?" Atomu smiled honestly and said seriously, "As for whether it's related to the sound of the harp, won't we know after we go in and take a look?"

"It's easy for you to say. How about you take the lead?" A man with many small iron studs on his face suddenly looked at Atomu.

This man is called Mark, and he is dressed quite fashionably. When Vincent suddenly went crazy just now, he was the closest to him. If he had not been alert enough, he would have been killed or injured.

Even now, his heart was still racing, and he regarded the palace before them with deep apprehension.

However, Atomu didn't seem to mind at all. He laughed and nodded, "Sure, I'm tough, so I should take the lead."

Seeing Atomu's carefree attitude, Mark didn't know what to say.

"Can you tell me in detail what happened just now?" Law ignored Mark and Atomu, and looked at Uncle Bill with a questioning look in his eyes.

'If the harp's sound is related to the Dark Sonata... then what is the connection between this place and Palo City?'

Uncle Bill nodded and began recounting the events as succinctly as possible.

After they left Law and Biscuit behind, they arrived here. At first, they were shocked by the scene in front of them. After seeing the ancient ruins on the platform, they immediately suspected that this was not Stargie's tomb, as a tomb shouldn't look like this.

However, as Atomu had mentioned earlier, they were here for wealth, so they still wanted to explore the palace. After all, judging from its size alone, there might be a lot of treasures inside.

Although they agreed, they were still cautious. After all, they had not forgotten the unknown roar they heard when they walked down the stone stairs.

The platform was vast, but the ruins only occupied about one-third of the area.

The palace stood roughly three stories tall, surrounded by towering stone pillars several meters thick, supporting a massive stone eave. From the front, it appeared as a high wall, with a wide-open stone door below leading into pitch darkness.

Both the pillars and the stone walls of the palace were adorned with carvings of suns, moons, flames, and lightning symbols.

Around the palace stood numerous fallen and upright stone pillars, along with over a dozen statues of humanoid figures with beast heads, each towering more than three meters high. At a glance, there were snake heads, crocodile heads, bird heads, tiger heads… an assortment of creatures.

Those stone statues each hold a weapon, and their muscular human bodies are bare, revealing their strong muscles.

Since the palace was the only relatively intact structure on the platform, Uncle Bill and the others naturally set their sights on this palace.

At that time, everyone walked together through the towering stone pillars and the piles of chaotically positioned stone statues and came to the front of the palace.

However, before they had time to go in, they heard a torrent of harp's sounds coming from the palace, which immediately startled everyone.

The sound came abruptly and lasted no more than five seconds before fading into silence.

Immediately afterwards, Vincent's body trembled, and he suddenly used Ren, unleashing an overwhelming amount of Aura, and then launched an attack against them.

Initially, they tried to reason with him, but Vincent had a fierce look in his eyes and kept his mouth shut, as if he hadn't heard anything at all.

In desperation, Uncle Bill and a few others wanted to subdue Vincent first, but they found it was not that easy. They were actually forced to retreat far away by Vincent. Finally, they could only kill him to stop the crazy Vincent.

After Uncle Bill finished recounting the events, Law fell into deep thought and asked, "Did anyone use Gyo to examine him?"

"Yes, but we didn't find anything unusual." Uncle Bill said in a deep voice. He had suspected that it was related to the Post-Mortem Nen, but after checking with Gyo, he didn't find anything unusual.

Due to the sudden and bizarre nature of the incident, after killing Vincent, everyone decided to stay outside the palace and did not rashly approach it.

Law remained silent. He could not get any useful information from Uncle Bill's narration.

If he wanted to find out about the harp's sound and Vincent's changes, he would probably have to go into the palace.

"So, should we go in and find out what's going on, or turn around and leave?" Law asked after a moment.

"This handsome guy doesn't want to go back empty-handed." Luby was the first to speak out.

Afterwards, others expressed their opinions one after another. Although Vincent's incident was too strange, they had invested too much time and effort into this expedition to simply leave now.

Seeing that no one was scared away, Law breathed a sigh of relief. After all, the more people, the better their odds when facing the unknown.

The group of nine people did not waste any more time. They left Vincent's body and walked slowly towards the palace with a very cautious attitude.

They walked all the way to the palace's entrance, but the sound of the harp did not appear again, which made Uncle Bill and the others feel somewhat reassured.

Standing before the open doorway, they shone their flashlights inside, revealing an empty, cavernous hall.

After a brief hesitation, they maintained high vigilance and cautiously stepped into the hall together.

At this moment, the stone door behind them made a rumbling sound and closed shut on its own.

Everyone was slightly surprised, but not too frightened. It was just a stone door and it was easy to reopen it if necessary. However, the automatically closed stone door showed the unusualness of this palace.

…

At the same time, on the platform outside the palace…

On the platform, the glowing blue tendrils on the mountain walls and ceiling began to wriggle, slithering like snakes, slowly extending toward Vincent's corpse.

If Law and the others were to cut open Vincent's body, they would undoubtedly find his internal organs shriveled and blackened, resembling withered flowers.