Who is the GOAT in human history?
The primate GOAT, Ronaldo?
The god of basketball, LeBron?
China’s nightmare, the Undying Demon King greater than his sport?
They’re all wrong.
Compared to the person about to be mentioned, they’re not even worth the grime beneath his nails.
The GOAT in human history is...
"That fucking Gon-beast."
A walking death flag.
A calamity wrapped in innocence.
Clown-exclusive pheromone perfume.
A lunatic who got strong enough to take down Meruem just by placing a single restriction on himself.
I was going to meet humanity’s worst protagonist.
"Still, I won’t die at the exam site, right?"
As far as I could tell, Gon’s father—Jin Freecss—had definitely abandoned his child and run because he was terrified of his son’s talent.
Imagine giving birth and finding a calamity on par with the Dark Continent wriggling around in front of you. How terrifying would that be?
I sympathize with you, Jin Freecss.
But fuck, if you hadn’t abandoned your kid, Gon wouldn’t have gone to take the Hunter Exam and awakened his talent in the first place.
I’d be filming Man vs. Nature and living off some rich woman instead. You fucking bastard.
In the end, I decided to take the Hunter Exam with Illumi.
I had considered seeing if I could somehow cozy up to old man Zeno, but the atmosphere wasn’t right for it.
Maybe because Kikyo had been hurt, everyone was subtly on edge.
The Zoldyck Family were the ultimate hypocrites. The guys who pretended to be coolheaded assassins got fucking emotional the moment it involved their own family.
"Creak. Is this the Hunter Exam site?"
Motherfucker.
Could you at least use your turn signal before showing up?
That asshole Illumi was disguised so Killua wouldn’t recognize him.
But his disguise consisted of jamming a ridiculous number of huge needles into his face and turning himself into Hellraiser.
I had no idea how he did it, but even his bone structure changed, and he became ugly as sin.
I’m not the type to discriminate against people based on looks, but that was ugliness itself. Surely it didn’t count.
"Master Illumi. From this point on, I will treat you as a stranger in public."
"Creak, creak. Do that. And right now, I’m Gittarackur."
What a fucking awful alias.
It was hard to pronounce, so from now on, he was Guitar Head.
"You remember the password, correct?"
We stood in front of a small restaurant beside an enormous cathedral.
"Are you going to keep speaking formally?"
If I speak casually, you’ll remember it and fuck me up later, asshole.
"I do not speak casually to anyone."
"I see. All right."
Not wanting to look at the fucking ugly Guitar Head any longer, I hurried into the restaurant.
The egg ghost was scary too, but that was just pure unpleasantness.
"Welcome!"
"The steak set. Slow-cooked over low heat."
"Go on in."
When I opened the door and stepped inside, there was an ordinary room with tables.
"Congratulations on overcoming one-in-ten-thousand odds. I’ll be taking my leave now."
The clerk turned a lever and left the room.
Then the elevator began descending with a mechanical hum.
"The entire room was an elevator."
"They really do serve steak. Would you like some too, Mr. Guitar?"
"I’m fine."
"Then I’ll excuse myself and eat alone."
I’ll eat your share too, then.
I cut into the nicely cooked steak and put a piece in my mouth.
They actually cooked it. I thought it was a display mo—
"!!!"
It’s fucking delicious...!
Fuck, yes. This was food.
It was on an entirely different level from that motherfucking poisonous soup and raw meat topped with toxic mushrooms.
That’s right. The world was originally full of delicious food like this.
"Gotoh?"
As I closed my eyes and shuddered in bliss, that Illumi asshole spoke to me.
Shut the fuck up.
I was enjoying a happiness you could never experience at your house.
"Did you eat a poison you’ve never had before? Your reaction is strange."
Look at his choice of words.
What the hell was a poison you’d never had before?
Normally, you die after eating poison once, idiot.
"No. I bit my tongue while eating too quickly, that’s all."
"Oh dear. Eat slowly. It looks like this will take a while."
No, Hellraiser bastard.
I’m going to eat every last bite so you don’t get any.
Come to think of it, whenever this guy got an assassination job, he probably went out and ate stuff like this every time, didn’t he?
Fucking lucky bastard.
The last time I accompanied an outside assignment was around three years ago.
This wasn’t the military. Did it make any sense that it took three years to eat normal food?
The Zoldycks really were something else.
When I returned to the Zoldyck estate, if nothing else, I was overturning their dining hall once.
By the time we reached the hundredth basement floor, I had finished my meal.
I wanted to lick the plate clean, but there were people watching, so I couldn’t.
It was fucking delicious.
The restaurant owner had to be a Gourmet Hunter.
I’d decided.
I probably wouldn’t pass, but if I got a Hunter License, I’d become a Gourmet Hunter.
I’d go around trying restaurants all day like a Michelin inspector.
The underground floor was already packed with people.
I received a numbered badge from some weird slime-looking guy. Mine was number 300, and Illumi’s was 301.
Three hundred people were already here? That was a fucking lot.
But I thought there were fewer than ten successful applicants.
Thinking they were all going to fail...
"Creak, creak. Let’s look for Killua."
"If you remain with me, Master Killua will grow suspicious, Mr. Guitar. Please stay far away."
And if possible, stay far away from my life too.
"Yeah. All right."
That idiot Illumi actually listened and disappeared into the distance.
Fuck. I could finally breathe.
Every second I spent beside that bastard felt like altitude sickness.
Let’s see.
Had Killua already met the protagonist’s group?
Or did they all meet at the exam site?
It had been so long since I read the original that my memory was hazy.
I’d even forgotten they had examinee numbers.
Normally at times like this, I’d use Nen to scan my surroundings, but...
Nen was basically the supernatural power used in the world of Hunter x Hunter.
More or less like chakra in a ninja world, or Chad’s spiritual pressure.
The problem was that if I used it, anyone else who could use Nen could detect me.
Like saying, ‘Chad’s spiritual pressure has disappeared...?’ If they had enough ability, they could notice my traces.
And at this exam site, there was one crazy psycho pervert who would jack off over those traces and follow them.
The clown, Hisoka.
Fuck.
He was a severely deranged lunatic who got a hard-on and picked a fight whenever someone looked remotely strong.
He was also the guy who took my head in the original.
How shocking had it been for me to remember it even ten years after reading the original?
Anyway, I couldn’t use Nen.
But weaving through the crowd would stand out in its own way too.
‘Can’t be helped.’
I’d just watch the original play out and take the Hunter Exam.
I didn’t think there had been any particular crisis at this stage.
If things looked fucked, Illumi could pull out his needles or something.
"Hello! You’re a rookie, right? I’m Tonpa. Ask me anything if you don’t know something. I’m a veteran of this exam, you see."
That’s right.
There was a guy like this too.
Tonpa, the Rookie Crusher.
He was a petty criminal who gave newcomers juice laced with laxatives and got them eliminated.
I felt like he’d done a few other things too...
‘He was such a fucking small-timer that I can’t remember.’
If you’re going to be a villain, commit some memorable crimes.
Look at the Phantom Troupe. Aren’t they easy to remember?
‘What crimes did you commit?’
‘Yes! We massacred the Kurta Clan! We wrecked Yorknew City!’
‘Mm, mm. I remember. What else?’
‘When we’re in a bad mood, we kill people! We’ve stolen a fuckton too!’
‘Good boys. As a reward, I grant you the title of “Unforgettable Fuckers.”’
‘Wow!’
Just thinking of them for a second made it overwhelmingly obvious that dealing with them would be exhausting.
Compared to them, this guy...
"You must be tired after coming down here, right? At our age, we need to keep our sugar up. Want some juice?"
He was no more than an ordinary shonen-manga villain.
Besides mixing laxatives into juice, what did he even do?
Fucking adorable.
What a cute little bastard.
That level of poison wouldn’t affect me, of course, but I still wasn’t drinking the juice.
"I’ll decline. I drank two servings of the orange juice that came with the steak."
"W-what?"
And when you mix laxatives into juice, it tastes fucking awful.
Next time, bring it mixed into a carbonated drink if you can.
Then I’ll drink it.
"Hahaha! Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Good luck on the exam! There isn’t anyone here you can take lightly."
You look like you’ll be the first one eliminated.
"Yes. Thank you for the advice."
After Tonpa left, I considered looking around some more, then decided to just keep my head down.
The exam would begin around the time the protagonist’s group arrived anyway.
I thought I saw that asshole Hisoka’s red hair far in the distance, so I kept an even lower profile.
A bastard like that ought to meet his match and die.
Should I send old man Zeno an anonymous job request next time?
‘Not a bad idea.’
But if I placed the request, Miluki would find out through hacking, so I’d have to make Hisoka earn enough of a grudge for the Zoldycks to take a contract on him.
That would be fucking easy.
That bastard lived with the entire world as his enemy.
As I kept myself hidden at the level of an ordinary person for a couple of hours, people continued coming down.
About another hundred seemed to arrive, but every single one of them looked weak.
‘Fucking weak.’
As expected, in this world, anyone who didn’t know Nen was a total scrub.
The more I thought about it, the more I knew that staying with the Zoldyck Family after transmigrating had been the right choice.
It was a brutal family, but there was no better place to learn Nen.
If I’d quit, I would’ve ended up among these fucking normies, saying, ‘Tch, those guys are pretty good,’ before exiting three panels later.
Honestly, even if you possessed strength on the level of the world’s strongest, your life was still at risk in Hunter x Hunter.
Wouldn’t it take someone like that old man who cuts boulders with scissors, or those people whose chests swell with grandeur, to defeat someone like Meruem, the setting’s mid-game boss?
Looking at it this way, the power balance was completely fucking hopeless.
And I was just Gotoh.
‘Motherfucker.’
Why did I have to transmigrate into a man in his thirties?
I was so fucking old that I had no potential left.
All I could do was use the techniques I already had in new ways.
What a depressing thought.
I should play with some coins.
I took out around four coins and rolled them between my fingers.
From my index fingers to my pinkies, two coins in each hand, without letting the coins overlap.
Doing this helped when I had too much on my mind.
A kind of routine, I suppose.
I hadn’t originally known how to do it, but after entering Gotoh’s body, it came naturally.
It seemed to be an effect similar to muscle memory.
For the record, if you did it too much, your fingers smelled strongly of money, so make sure to wash your hands.
"Aaaaah!"
That startled me.
I turned at a scream that sounded like some bespectacled child detective-slash-murderer ought to appear.
There, a man was staring at his own elbow with a shocked expression.
"M-my, my, my..."
"Ooh my. How fascinating♥ Your arm disappeared♣"
"M-my, my, my arm~~!!"
"There are no tricks or gimmicks♠ You should be careful◆ When you bump into someone, apologize right away♣"
"Tch... Another dangerous one this year..."
Fuck.
The death flags—the original-story kind—had begun.
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