After leaving the bookstore, Yui imdiately hurried to a nearby park. She found a pavilion shaded from the early-morning sun, sat down, and carefully tore off the plastic wrap from the Dream Comic magazine.
She flipped past the table of contents on the first page.
On the second page, she froze.
A ticulously drawn color illustration filled her vision.
The Ant King sat at a board, playing a ga against the silver-haired blind girl who had appeared in the previous chapters, Komugi.
Behind him, his tail coiled above his head, the sharp needle at its tip faintly angled toward the girl.
Across from him, Komugi leaned forward slightly, her entire attention focused on the board. Though she could not see, Yui could understand her concentration and sincerity at a single glance.
Shirogane's artwork is incredible.
Yui sighed inwardly.
Using this illustration as the chapter's opening was practically laying the cards on the table for every Hunter × Hunter reader.
Sothing big was going to happen between the Ant King and this girl.
Love?
The thought flashed through her mind, and then she laughed at herself.
"Who would fall in love with food?"
To the Ant King, Komugi was rely bread, a resource to be used in the selection ceremony six days later. Those with value would be transford into Chira Ant soldiers. The rest would be eaten.
Even a Gungi world champion was, in his grand design, rely low-quality bread.
Such a fragile girl surely had very little protein value.
Yet as these thoughts passed through her mind, Yui's expression stiffened.
The more she read, the more she realized sothing unsettling.
She was unconsciously beginning to view the world from the Ant King's perspective.
She did not even hate him.
In fact, she was starting to feel that the Ant King, not Gon, was the true protagonist of this arc.
Yui turned the page.
The opening panel showed the Ant King's finger placing a black General piece into the lower-left corner of the Gungi board.
The blind girl across from him could not see the world, nor could she see the Ant King's monstrous, inhuman form.
But for soone who had never seen anything at all, was there truly a difference between humans, ants, or beasts?
In a pitch-black world, were they not all just opponents seated across the board?
Komugi traced the board lightly with her fingers, locating the pieces by touch alone.
She smiled cheerfully as she played against the person she believed to be the Supre Leader of this country.
Beside them, the Royal Guard held a book in his hands, elegant and lancholy, yet his attention never left the Ant King.
Over the past several days, the Ant King had challenged Komugi again and again.
In every other ga, he had defeated human champions within hours, learning the rules, mastering them, and killing his opponents through victory itself.
But against Komugi, he was stuck.
Several days had passed, and he still had not achieved a single win.
Yui leaned forward unconsciously.
In Rei's previous life, the Ant Arc had often been criticized for rough artwork due to Yoshihiro Togashi's frequent hiatuses.
But the information density of those chapters had been imnse.
Large blocks of internal monologue and psychological narration were embedded directly into the pages. Rei had significantly improved the visual quality in this Japanese version, but he had not removed this textual depth.
If one did not read carefully, crucial aning would be lost.
Here, the flow of the match was conveyed almost entirely through the inner thoughts of the Ant King and Komugi.
Yui did not understand Gungi's rules at all.
And yet, it felt amazing.
She let out a slow breath.
It was the sa feeling she had when reading Hikaru no Go.
She did not understand Go, but she understood people.
The ga itself was not important.
What mattered was the way the ga shaped the two characters.
The Ant King had spent the entire night calculating a killing sequence.
He chose a joseki that deliberately isolated his own General, abandoning defense entirely to launch a decisive attack.
He was convinced this would finally secure his first victory.
But after more than a hundred moves, he realized the truth.
The formation he believed to be flawless, the move he thought utterly inescapable, was riddled with weaknesses.
After only a few minutes of hesitation, Komugi placed a single piece.
The entire structure collapsed.
The Ant King had already been prepared to kill her under the rules of victory.
The faint brightness in his eyes vanished instantly, replaced by icy coldness.
[You knew this was a dead end from the start.]
Killing intent surged.
Yu's breath caught.
He would not flip the board and kill her just because he could not win, would he?
[Yes.]
Komugi answered calmly.
[Then why did you hesitate? You could have played that move imdiately.] the Ant King demanded.
[Because the move the you used] Komugi said softly,
[was actually the first strategy I ever created.]
[I invented it ten years ago. At the ti, it beca very popular in the Gungi world.]
[But the person who killed that strategy was also .]
[A year later, my opponent used it against . In that match, I found a way to counter it, the very move I just played.]
[Although I won that ga, because the counter existed, that strategy disappeared forever.]
[So I was very honored, and moved, that you thought of the sa sequence.]
Her expression was complicated.
But Yui understood imdiately.
Komugi's hesitation was not fear.
It was reverence.
For the first ti in her life, this Gungi genius had encountered another genius who had reached the sa place she once had.
Because she knew very well that this opponent, whose true face she had never seen, had grown from an ordinary player who did not even understand the rules of Gungi into a formidable opponent capable of matching her in just a few short days.
The Ant Knig naturally knew nothing about Gungi from ten years ago, so…
"It was as if my child, who had died, had co back to life. That is what I thought, which is why I hesitated on that move. I could not bear to take the life of 'this move' again."
Komugi clutched the corner of her clothes tightly.
A mist welled up in Yui's eyes.
For Komugi, she had found a soulmate.
The killing intent on the Ant King's face gradually dissipated. He stood up and left Komugi with only a single sentence.
"Go rest. During our next ga, you will not have ti to rest. Prepare yourself."
As the Ant King turned away, Komugi bowed deeply in gratitude. The manga panels showed Royal Guard's surprise that the Ant King had listened silently to Komugi's words without killing her.
At that mont, Yui suddenly grasped a feeling she could not quite put into words.
Her greatest curiosity about this arc was no longer whether Gon would succeed in his revenge.
Instead, it had shifted to sothing else entirely.
How would the story between the Ant King and Komugi develop?
When the Ant King finally defeated Komugi, would he kill her?
The next section of the chapter should have been interesting to Yui. It featured the Nen ability expert "Momo-go" from the Ant King Extermination Team led by Chairman Netero, engaging in battle with a powerful Chira Ant.
Yet she skimd through those panels without hesitation.
What she wanted to see now was Komugi's storyline.
At last, near the end of the chapter, the Ant King rose from his throne alone and entered the ga room.
Komugi was there, asleep at the ga table, drooling slightly.
"Why can soone so lacking in intellect and grace continuously produce such ultimate and beautiful ga records?"
The Ant King pondered silently as he glanced sideways.
A smile had already ford on Yui's lips.
How fascinating.
The Ant King and Komugi's plotline.
How did Shirogane even co up with sothing like this?
A board ga match inside a battle manga.
The Ant King's character was no longer being shaped by combat victories or defeats, but by a ga played across a wooden board.
That previously brutal, bloody, and hateful image had been almost completely overturned.
Was this the accumulation of experience from serializing Hikaru no Go?
The manga continued with another match that Yui did not understand. Halfway through, the Ant King suddenly made a proposal.
"Shall we place a bet on this ga?"
"A bet?"
"If you win, I will grant you any request. But if you lose, give your left arm."
The Ant King's handso face curved into a cruel smile.
Narration and internal monologue explained his intent.
Victory and defeat did not always lie on the board itself.
Since Komugi was so strong, he would use thods outside the ga to restrain her.
If her arm beca the wager, would she still be able to play with calm brilliance while gripped by fear?
Yui clenched her teeth the instant she read this.
Just when she thought the Ant King and humans rely stood on different sides, it beca clear that he was also a scher.
He only cared about winning.
How he won did not matter.
Winning through overwhelming strength was ideal, but crushing the opponent psychologically so they could not perform at their peak was equally acceptable.
Everything fell within the rules he had defined for himself.
Yui rapidly flipped the pages.
Komugi appeared with her eyes closed, deep in thought, clearly struggling over whether to accept the wager.
"What are you hesitating for?" the Ant King asked.
"I do not want to bet my left arm," Komugi said softly, sounding discouraged.
"Can I change it to what I have always bet?"
Her blind eyes remained closed, yet she faced the Ant King with a gentle smile.
"What is that?"
Yui turned the page.
The final page of the chapter showed the silver-haired girl smiling beautifully, calm and serene, without the slightest trace of fear.
"My life."
"If I lose, you may take my life."
The thing she had always bet.
So this was how Komugi had always played.
With this conviction.
Yui's fingers trembled.
Sothing stirred deeply in her heart.
At this mont, both the Ant King and Komugi felt vividly alive.
In this single panel, Komugi's previously slovenly image vanished completely, replaced by an indescribable charm.
'Shirogane, you are simply too good at creating characters.'
And this cliffhanger…
Do you really have to wring your brain dry and end every chapter at a mont like this?
...
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