Hunter x Hunter: Deathless Spider

[The Devoted Reader]

Synopsis

Aren wakes in Meteor City with bullet holes in his chest and a body that refuses to stay dead.

Around him are the children who will one day become the Phantom Troupe.
The world was meant to fear the Spiders.

Aren was never meant to become one.

Tags

action, adventure, animefanfiction, antihero, fanfiction, hunterxhunter, hxh, malereader, mature, overpoweredmc, phantomtroupe, reincarnation, ruthlessmc, transmigration

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001 - The Undying

A pure white space, empty and unknown.

An indistinct figure stood in silence, gazing at the small sphere resting in its hand.

To the people of this world, Gaia had worn many names: god, creator, truth. It preferred something simpler: the planet's will.

The planet was dying.

Gaia had sensed the sickness long ago. Something like a virus had appeared somewhere deep within the world. Not a single strain, but a cluster of parasite-like things quietly gnawing away at the planet's life force.

Gaia wanted to root them out, but no matter how hard it searched, it could never find them.

Now, all it could do was pin its hopes on the sphere that had appeared at the same moment as those parasites.

At first, the object had seemed ordinary, noteworthy only because it had arrived alongside the sickness eating the world.

The longer Gaia studied it, the clearer it became that the sphere was anything but ordinary.

It could copy any shape. It could imitate all things. Given enough time, it might even become anything in the world.

And so, the planet's will released it into the world below. Perhaps this sphere would become the turning point the dying planet needed.

The moment it let go, the sphere began to fall.

But just as it was about to strike a small stone on the ground, the space around it twisted.

The distortion swallowed the sphere whole.

For the first time, Gaia betrayed an almost human flicker of surprise.

The next instant, it appeared at the place where space had warped.

There was nothing there.

For a long while, the planet's will said nothing.

...

Meteor City.

Its land area was roughly equal to that of the Lapet Republic.

For fifteen hundred years, the city had served as a dumping ground. Official records listed it as uninhabited territory, which meant that even if an infant was abandoned there, no national ID number or biological data had to be registered.

Anything could be thrown away there.

Garbage. Weapons. Corpses. Children.

Everything the world discarded, its people accepted.

A place like that bred dangerous people in unusual numbers. The residents survived by scavenging and recycling the waste others cast aside, while the underworld supplied them with heavy metals and weapons, drawing in those born and raised in violence.

"We reject no one, so take nothing from us."

Bloodshed was never rare there, whether the dead came from inside the city or beyond it.

At that moment, on one of the countless garbage heaps, a fight was already nearing its end.

"You Fanobi bastards! Are you trying to start a war with the Nostrade Family?"

A man in a plain black suit clutched the gunshot wound in his right shoulder and glared at another black-suited man standing across from him with a mocking smile.

"War?" the Fanobi leader said, bursting into laughter. "With an upstart little outfit like yours? What makes you think you get to use that word with us?"

His grin sharpened.

"A little family that only started making a name for itself a year or two ago, sneaking into Meteor City to hire muscle behind our backs. What, were you planning to challenge our place in Gambi Town?"

He raised one hand.

"Kill them."

The men behind him lifted their submachine guns and pulled the triggers without hesitation.

"Damn it!"

The Nostrade men had no chance to resist. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and had walked straight into a prepared ambush.

When the smoke cleared, they were all dead.

Before leaving, the Fanobi leader spat on the pile of bodies.

His family had ruled Gambi Town for sixty years. In that place, their word was law. Every local power had to fall in line.

And yet this upstart family had dared to come to Meteor City in secret and recruit muscle of its own.

If the Fanobi Family had not maintained a relationship with the city's Sixth Elder, and if that elder had not warned them immediately, the Nostrades might actually have brought those recruits back.

The Fanobi leader did not believe they could threaten his family's rule, not even if they succeeded.

But that was not the point.

In the underworld, violence was not the most important thing.

Reputation was.

Violence was only the tool used to protect it.

The gunmen had barely left when the space above the heap of corpses suddenly twisted.

Among the dead was a young man with pure white hair, his body riddled with bullets. A pale, illusory sphere emerged through the distortion and sank into his chest, rippling faintly as it disappeared.

He was one of the recruits the Nostrades had bought from the Third Elder.

Pain crashed through Aren Voss in waves, as if someone had stuffed him into a sack and beaten him until every bone ached.

A stench followed.

It was so foul it felt almost physical, like rotting rats sealed in a vat with sewage and left to ferment.

The smell hit him with unreasonable force.

If he could have pinched his nose shut, Aren would have done it immediately.

But he could not.

Right now, he could not move so much as a finger. He could not even open his eyes.

His mind was terrifyingly clear, yet his body refused to respond, as if he had woken trapped in a nightmare of sleep paralysis.

'What happened?'

'Wasn't I in a hotel?'

'Why do I feel like someone beat me half to death and threw me into a sewer?'

'Had the woman from last night been hiding someone after all?'

Aren had no idea why he was here. His last memory was of a hotel room, a woman he had spent the night with, and the cigarette he had smoked afterward on the balcony.

He had been a psychologist. Between his looks and his ability to read people with unsettling precision, his private life had always been a mess.

'No. She was single. I'm sure of it.'

'Unless one of the men around her found out and lost his mind?'

He had read people for a living. If she had been hiding something that obvious, he should have noticed.

Before he could think any further, a vast flood of memories surged into his mind.

It was too much.

In an instant, Aren's thoughts crashed to a halt, and he lost consciousness again.

As he lay there, something instinctive stirred inside his bloodstained, bullet-riddled body.

His flesh twisted, then began to knit itself back together. One by one, the bullets lodged inside him were forced out.

A moment later, every injury on his body had vanished.

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[The Devoted Reader]

002 - Meteor City

"Move it! This place is ours now. Everybody else, get lost!"

The clash between the Nostrade and Fanobi families had made enough noise to draw scavengers from every corner of the surrounding waste. A pack of Meteor City hyenas had been waiting at the edge of the battlefield for the killing to end.

Once they were sure the Fanobi men had left, they rushed in to strip the Nostrade corpses.

Clothes, weapons, even bodies.

In Meteor City, everything had value.

Before the hyenas could get close, a rough voice barked from behind them.

The crowd froze.

Everyone who worked this part of the city knew that brute all too well.

One of the scavengers glanced at the feast of loot in front of him, unwilling to back down so easily. He turned toward the towering boy behind him and snapped, "Uvogin! You think you can swallow a prize this big by yourself?"

Uvogin bared his teeth in a savage grin.

"Hehahahaha. Got a problem with it? Then let's fight. Anyone who has a complaint can come at me together."

He lowered his stance and fixed his eyes on the speaker.

Behind him, the other two shifted as well.

The boy with the samurai topknot, a little shorter than Uvogin, rested one hand on the battered sword at his waist. Beside him, a girl with purplish-pink hair began winding steel thread through her fingers.

Killing intent rolled off the three of them, far too cold and practiced for children their age.

The air locked tight.

The hyena who had spoken first broke into a sweat. Greed had made him forget exactly what kind of trio he was facing.

Now that their attention was on him, reason returned in a hurry.

When he saw that nobody else planned to stand with him, his courage collapsed. He cursed under his breath and slowly backed away, keeping his eyes on Uvogin until he was clear.

The others followed. With no chance to fish in troubled waters, they withdrew one by one.

"Tch. Boring." Uvogin clicked his tongue.

Still, the haul in front of them was worth at least a week's usual scavenging. He had no real interest in chasing people down when there was loot to claim.

"Forget them," the swordsman said, clapping him on the shoulder. "This should feed the three of us for several days."

"Hahahaha. Then you can fight me later, Nobunaga." Uvogin hooked an arm around his neck.

"Fine by me. One black ration bar says I win."

Nobunaga twisted free, not backing down at all.

The pink-haired girl was clearly used to this. She only shook her head and walked toward the bodies to check for anything they might have missed.

"Hey, Machi! Wait for us."

It did not take long for the three of them to strip the Nostrade corpses of anything useful.

Mafia battles in Meteor City were not rare. Most ended the same way, unless luck left something unusual behind.

Weapons. Clothes. Corpses.

This time was no different. Aside from a phone and a small amount of Jenny, there was almost nothing worth taking.

"Machi, why are you staring at that body?" Uvogin asked after he and Nobunaga finished their search. "Hurry up. We can trade that phone for meat."

She stood over a white-haired boy in a bloodstained, ruined suit.

"He's alive," Machi said coolly.

Uvogin blinked. "Then he's lucky."

He did not think any deeper than that, but Nobunaga's expression sharpened.

"No. Look at his clothes. He was shot a lot, but his body doesn't have a mark on it."

Anyone raised in Meteor City learned the same rule: do not touch what you do not understand.

The trash hid treasure, but it hid dangers too. Radioactive material. Poison. Things that could kill you before you knew what you had found.

Normally, scavengers wore protective gear when they went through the piles. Today they had rushed out without any, chasing after news of a mafia battle.

Faced with something this strange, Nobunaga's instincts told him to leave at once.

"Let's go. Leave him."

He had just reached for Machi when she spoke again.

"No. My sixth sense says bringing him with us will help."

Uvogin and Nobunaga both stopped.

Machi was only eleven, but there was a reason she could stand beside monsters like them.

Her stitching was precise enough to close wounds quickly after a fight, and her sixth sense had saved them from danger again and again. At times, it felt almost supernatural.

They trusted that instinct without question.

After a moment of silence, Uvogin nodded first.

"If you say so, we'll take him."

He hoisted the white-haired boy over one shoulder.

Nobunaga opened his mouth, then closed it again without arguing.

...

"Ah!"

Aren woke with a violent jolt.

Cold sweat covered his forehead. He lifted a hand and wiped at it, still breathing hard.

The flood of memories that had crashed through his mind belonged to the body's original owner.

Like most of Meteor City's residents, that boy had been discarded by the world. He had grown up in the trash without knowing his parents, and even his name had been something chosen casually, more for convenience than meaning.

In that forgotten place, survival had been the only law.

Robbery. Theft. Murder. Poison.

If it could secure supplies, he had done it.

Over time, those methods had earned him a small reputation among the local hyenas. That was why the Third Elder had noticed him and traded him to the Nostrade Family in exchange for the promise of a legal identity outside Meteor City.

The memories were full of killing. Blood. Organs. The sensation of flesh tearing under his hands.

Worse, they were tangled with memories of strange food, foul smells, and textures Aren's modern mind could barely process.

He still had not recovered. His breaths came harsh and uneven.

At last, his stomach twisted too hard to ignore.

Just as he opened his mouth to vomit, a young, cold female voice came from the side.

"If you throw up in here, I'll kick you out."

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[The Devoted Reader]

003 - Machi's Trio

"If you throw up in here, I'll kick you out."

The sudden voice snapped Aren's stomach back under control.

His body moved before his mind caught up. He forced down the nausea and turned toward the sound, half raising his guard.

A girl of about eleven leaned against the doorway, watching him with cool eyes. Her hair was a familiar shade of purplish pink, and the hard calm on her young face made his thoughts stall.

Machi.

From his old world, Aren knew this place as Hunter x Hunter. He had realized that much while absorbing the body's memories, but knowing the world and waking up in front of a future Phantom Troupe member were very different things.

From the look of it, she was also the one who had brought him back.

Before he lost consciousness, his whole body had been burning with pain. The memories said he had been shot several times. Now he could sit up without so much as an ache.

"You look like you know me," Machi said.

She had trusted her sixth sense since childhood. She did not doubt it now.

"I've heard of you," Aren said after a beat. "You, Uvogin, and Nobunaga are famous even in my old district."

The body's memories gave him enough truth to work with. Machi and her two companions really did have a reputation.

She nodded, accepting the answer. If nothing else, it confirmed that the boy in front of her was from Meteor City, not the mafia.

"Did you save me?" Aren asked.

In the story he remembered, Machi had never been the type to rescue strangers out of simple kindness.

"No. You were already like that when I found you."

She studied him a moment longer before denying it.

'Was that what came with being thrown into this world?'

Aren frowned and flexed one hand. At this point, he still did not know that he had fused with the thing called the Undying.

His strength felt the same as it did in the memories. Whether anything else had changed would have to wait.

"I see. Either way, thanks for bringing me back." He gave her a small nod. "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Aren Voss."

Machi only glanced at him. She did not explain her sixth sense to someone she had just met.

Silence settled between them.

Before it could turn truly awkward, a booming laugh crashed through the doorway.

"Hahahaha! Machi, look what we traded for! Not just black ration bars. Two whole chickens!"

Uvogin burst inside, holding up the birds like trophies.

Then he noticed Aren was awake.

"Oh, you're up."

The heavy atmosphere broke at once, and Aren quietly let out a breath.

"Hello. I'm Aren Voss. Thank you for bringing me back."

"Ahahaha, good to meet you. I'm Uvogin. No need to thank me, though. Machi's the one who told me to carry you."

He waved the thanks away without the slightest awkwardness.

"Uvogin, you bastard!" another voice shouted from behind him. "You ran off with both chickens and left me to carry the whole crate of ration cakes!"

Nobunaga appeared behind him and kicked him through the doorway.

After stepping inside, he saw Aren sitting up. He was still wary, but his trust in Machi's instinct won out.

"Oh. You're awake..."

He did not get to finish.

Uvogin caught his balance and punched him flying.

"Nobunaga! You want a fight, don't you? Hahahaha. Good. Time for duel number three hundred seventy-six!"

Nobunaga scrambled up, furious. "Fine! Come on, you idiot!"

"Hahahaha, bring it!"

The two crashed into each other in a flurry of fists and kicks.

Aren's mouth twitched. He turned toward Machi. "Are they always this close?"

Machi rubbed her temple like she had a headache.

She was the youngest of the trio, but she clearly made most of their decisions. Uvogin and Nobunaga were Enhancer types through and through, and neither of them was built for subtle leadership.

Nobunaga was a little better, but one good provocation was enough to throw his brain out the window.

"Don't break the house," Machi said.

The fight was getting wider by the second.

"Relax. We won't break any- ah!"

The instant Nobunaga looked away to answer her, Uvogin's eyes gleamed.

"Opening spotted!"

He landed a shameless cheap shot from behind.

Nobunaga doubled over, trembling with rage and pain.

"Yes! That's two hundred five wins, seventy-eight draws, and ninety-three losses! Hahahaha. You're still no match for me!"

"That wasn't a win, you bastard," Nobunaga hissed. "That was an ambush."

Machi picked up the chickens Uvogin had tossed aside and put an end to the nonsense.

"Enough. Eat before they go bad."

Then she looked back at Aren. After a short pause, she said, "You can eat with us this time. We traded your companions' things for it anyway."

Food was precious in Meteor City. Meat even more so. Most residents could go an entire year without tasting any.

For Machi to share it with him was more generous than Aren had expected. He had already assumed he would be going hungry tonight.

"Thank you, Machi."

Given his looks, that smile usually had an effect.

On Machi, it did nothing.

After Machi's simple, rough cooking, the two chickens came out slightly scorched but edible.

There was no seasoning, no sauce, not even a proper marinade.

Natural flavor was one thing. This was something else.

Aren stared at the roast chicken and had no idea where to begin.

His previous life had not taught him hardship. He had been good-looking, well-off, and very satisfied with his comfortable modern life. He had never once wished to be thrown into another world.

Across from him, Uvogin and Nobunaga ate the chicken with black ration bars.

The cakes reminded Aren far too much of those protein blocks from an old dystopian film, the kind nobody wanted to know the ingredients of.

That image nearly brought his nausea back. Since he also felt no hunger at all, his appetite vanished completely.

Uvogin noticed. "Aren, why aren't you eating?"

"It's nothing. I just..."

Aren was about to say he was not hungry and would save it for later.

Then something inside his body stirred.

Following that instinct, he opened his right hand.

A medium-rare Kobe steak appeared in his palm.

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[The Devoted Reader]

004 - Uvogin's Tears

The smell of the Kobe steak filled the room.

For a moment, all four of them froze.

"Aren... were you hiding food on you?" Uvogin blurted first. "No, that can't be right. I checked you before. You didn't have anything."

"No," Machi said calmly. "It appeared directly in his hand. He didn't take it out."

Nobunaga's eyes sharpened. "If he made it appear, is that like the strange powers the elders' bodyguards have?"

Aren knew what he meant.

Nen.

He had no idea how he had gained this ability, but he was sure he had not awakened Nen. If he had, he should have felt something.

For now, he had no good explanation.

"I don't know," he said. "I just felt like I could do it, so I did."

Uvogin's eyes lit up.

"Forget how for now. Can you make more?"

For once, the loudest person in the room had asked the most important question.

They did not need to know the source of Aren's power. Not immediately. What mattered was the result.

If he could keep making food, they would never have to worry about starving again.

In Meteor City, food was survival.

Nobunaga gave Uvogin a surprised look. "I didn't know you could ask smart questions."

Machi glanced at him. "Even fools get lucky sometimes."

Uvogin ignored both of them. "Aren, try it again."

"I... probably can."

Before he finished speaking, another steak appeared in his left hand.

Uvogin snatched it and bit straight into the meat.

Juice, tenderness, rich beef, sauce balanced so perfectly it felt unreal.

For Uvogin, who had spent his entire life in Meteor City, the taste hit like a miracle.

He had once believed Machi's roast chicken was the best food in the world.

Now that world shattered.

Tears ran down his face.

Even so, his mouth never stopped moving.

Nobunaga, who had known him longer than anyone, had never seen him like this. He grabbed Uvogin by the shoulders and shook him.

"Uvogin! Hey, what's wrong with you?"

Uvogin swallowed the last bite, drew in a huge breath, and roared, "That was incredible!"

The shout made Aren's ears ring. Nobunaga, standing right beside him, suffered even worse.

Only Machi escaped. The moment she saw Uvogin inhale, she covered her ears.

"Idiot!" Nobunaga slapped him over the head. "Why are you yelling?"

Uvogin did not care. He pointed at the others, practically glowing.

"Nobunaga, Machi, hurry up and try it. I'm telling you, it's so good you won't believe it."

"Can it really be that dramatic?" Nobunaga muttered.

He admitted the meat looked good, but Uvogin had cried over it. That seemed excessive.

"It is. Try it. Aren, give us a few more."

From the feeling he had just experienced, creating food did not seem to cost him anything.

Aren aimed his right hand at a plate and produced a dozen steaks in a neat stack.

Considering Uvogin's size, a few pieces would not be enough.

Uvogin grabbed one in each hand and looked at Nobunaga and Machi expectantly, like someone desperate for his friends to understand his discovery.

Under that stare, they each picked up a piece and tasted it.

The instant the beef touched their tongues, both of their eyes widened.

A warmth they had never known spread from the taste itself through their entire bodies.

Now they understood why Uvogin had cried.

It really was that good.

"Hahahaha! See? I told you I wasn't lying."

For a while, nobody spoke. They simply ate.

Even Machi, usually the coldest one in the room, lost some of her restraint.

In the end, she was still a child raised in a place where food was never guaranteed.

Watching her eat with such focus made something in Aren's chest soften.

As for Uvogin and Nobunaga, their size made sympathy a little harder to summon.

Machi seemed to sense his gaze. She looked up and narrowed her eyes, as if asking whether he had been thinking something rude.

Aren only smiled.

She stared at him for another moment, then surrendered to the steak in front of her.

'For all that ice, she's still young.'

Aren cut into his own steak. He still felt no hunger, but good food could soothe the mind even when the body did not need it.

After the day he had endured, he would take that comfort.

When the meal ended, Uvogin and Nobunaga sprawled shamelessly on the floor, hands on their swollen stomachs and faces full of bliss.

Machi was less obvious, but even she had eaten her fill.

Aren had created more than thirty steaks. He had eaten two. The other three had handled the rest.

By the end, he could only stare.

This really was the kind of world where a child with a bit of training could push a ton. The appetites here were just as unreasonable.

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[The Devoted Reader]

005 - A Place to Sleep

"You really can always trust Machi," Uvogin said from the floor.

There was no arguing with that.

If Machi had not noticed Aren lying among the corpses and decided to bring him back, none of them would have eaten anything like that meal.

"She's amazing," Nobunaga agreed, still full and satisfied.

Uvogin laughed. "Funny. I wonder which coward said we shouldn't bring Aren back."

"Hey! That's called being cautious. I wasn't being a coward."

Being exposed in front of the person in question clearly embarrassed Nobunaga.

"Hahahaha. Sounded like cowardice to me."

Uvogin saw no problem with saying that in front of Aren.

After a moment, Nobunaga sat up and faced him properly.

"Aren, you're from Meteor City too, so you know how it is. We don't take risks with things we don't understand. I should apologize for that. Sorry."

Aren waved it off. "It's fine. I understand."

Pity and sympathy were poison in Meteor City.

Bringing a stranger home without knowing what he was could easily get everyone killed.

From what Uvogin and Nobunaga had said, Aren now understood why they had brought him back at all.

Machi's sixth sense.

She must have felt he would benefit them somehow.

Uvogin's expression grew unusually serious.

"Aren, I'm straightforward, so I'll just ask. How did you do it?"

Then he seemed to realize the question was too blunt and added, "You don't have to answer if you don't want to. I'm just curious."

Aren smiled helplessly. He really did not know. All he remembered was thinking about food from his previous life, feeling his body stir, and then the steak appearing in his hand.

"Honestly, I don't know. I never had this ability before. If I did, I wouldn't have been sold to the mafia by an elder."

Nobunaga came closer, rubbing his chin.

"Maybe almost dying awakened that Nen ability Chrollo talked about. You know, the strange powers used by the elders' bodyguards."

Aren's eyes sharpened.

'Chrollo?'

So Chrollo had already made contact with Uvogin and the others at this point.

Aren looked at them and estimated their age. The timing fit. The Phantom Troupe's formation should not be far off, so it was not strange that Chrollo had begun gathering people.

After hearing Nobunaga's theory, Uvogin looked convinced. If this was a superpower, then food appearing out of nowhere became easier to accept.

Aren knew better.

This was almost certainly not Nen. From what he remembered, awakening Nen came with a clear sensation. He had felt nothing of the sort.

Regeneration, object creation, the lack of hunger... either his body had changed in some unknown way, or it was tied to whatever had brought him here.

Food creation still did not fit neatly with either explanation.

It felt too specific to be that simple.

On top of that, he had not felt hunger since waking up. He had eaten two steaks without any sense of fullness either. After almost a full day without food, that should have been impossible.

Still, now was not the time to test everything. He needed privacy for that.

Beside him, Uvogin scratched his chin and muttered, "So almost dying can awaken powers..."

For Uvogin, that was a quiet voice. For everyone else, it was perfectly audible.

Aren stared at him in alarm.

That line of thinking could get a man killed for real.

Before Aren could decide how to stop him, Machi spoke.

"Don't be stupid, Uvogin. We've seen plenty of people almost die. How many of them awakened anything?"

She paused, then added, "If you really want to learn about those powers, we can talk to Chrollo later."

Nobunaga looked surprised. "Machi, weren't you the one who said we shouldn't get involved with Chrollo yet? Why change your mind?"

"Before, I saw no reason to join his group, so there was no need to approach him. But if he has information about these abilities, then he is after something. It won't hurt to hear him out."

Then she turned to Aren directly.

"What about you? Are you coming with us, or going back to your old district?"

Aren thought for a moment.

"You picked me up, Machi. I'll stay with you. I don't have anywhere else I want to go for now."

The body's original owner had been somewhat capable by local standards, but compared to Uvogin and Nobunaga, he was nowhere near enough.

Until Aren understood his own body, staying with them gave him the best chance of surviving.

Machi nodded.

"Then you'll handle our daily food. Uvogin, Nobunaga, and I will handle the rest of the supplies."

"Hahahaha. Leave your safety to me!"

Uvogin grinned broadly.

After eating Aren's steak, he could not imagine going back to black ration bars.

Aren did not refuse. He patted Uvogin's shoulder and smiled.

"I'm counting on you."

"Then that's it for tonight," Nobunaga said, relieved now that Aren had agreed to stay. "We need to get up early tomorrow and gather supplies for him."

Aren's food was too tempting. Nobody wanted him leaving.

Nobunaga started gathering the dishes, then suddenly remembered something.

"Right. Since you only arrived today, we don't have a house ready for you. For now, you'll have to squeeze in with someone."

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