Jon didn't linger long after leaving the Heavens Arena.
Dressed in a casual white coat over a plain black shirt and travel boots still scuffed from yesterday's fight, he made his way straight to the airship terminal—a luxury reserved only for the elite. Not that he paid a cent. Flashing his Hunter License was enough to waive the fee.
It felt satisfying.
He thought back to the train he had taken months ago, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with other rookie Hunters and desperate examinees. Back then, he didn't dare show off the license too openly. The moment someone smelled blood—or value—they'd swarm like leeches.
But now?
Jon possessed King Crimson, Stone Free, Epitaph, and even Man in the Mirror. A full arsenal. If anyone had ideas, they were welcome to try. He dared them to.
As he boarded the massive, cigar-shaped airship, he couldn't help but smirk.
"Now then... who dares to kill me now?"
The airship itself was sleek—black and silver with a polished chrome undercarriage. Inside, it was like a five-star hotel in the sky. Quiet, plush, and utterly clean. Even the ambient music felt curated to soothe the nerves of the filthy rich.
Jon slumped into a wide recliner near a panoramic window. Below, the city bustled like a labyrinth of light and movement. He was still lower than the room he had in Heavens Arena, but the view was no less spectacular.
He reached into his coat, pulled out a pair of noise-cancelling earbuds, and plugged them in. Soft jazz hummed to life in his ears. At the same time, a flight attendant placed a silver tray with roasted chicken and forest greens on the table beside him.
Jon took one bite and grinned.
"Perfect texture... Now, let's see what happens when I throw a Pearl Jam in there…"
He discreetly popped a small tomato from Pearl Jam into his mouth, and immediately, his entire digestive system let out a soft glow. His fatigue from yesterday's fight began to melt away.
"God, this combo's broken. Flight food and pearl jam."
Though the airship was crowded, the vibe was different—wealth insulated these passengers from chaos. No one was loud. No one was fidgety. They weren't here to arrive quickly. They were here to arrive comfortably.
Hours passed. Jon had dozed off for a while, then got up to stretch. Walking through the polished corridor, he gazed outside at the endless forest below.
Nature in this world really was something else. Miles and miles of untouched green, the kind of unspoiled land that didn't exist in his old world anymore. Thick trees like ancient monuments, rivers that shimmered like silver threads.
Unbeknownst to Jon, the airship was now flying over a militarized buffer zone between two large countries. That explained the untouched wilderness—nobody dared build anything here.
Then suddenly—
BRRRRRRRRRRRR—!!
An alarm shattered the quiet.
Jon's body moved before his brain could catch up.
Epitaph activated.
Stone Free unraveled.
He didn't even think—his instincts simply exploded outward in reaction.
In that vision, he saw it—an enormous blast, engulfing the airship in a fiery inferno. Passengers reduced to cinders. Metal bending, bones shattering, pressure plummeting. It was death. Complete and total.
"—King Crimson!"
Time erased.
The hallway around him shattered as the bomb detonated in real time. Glass exploded outward. The hull ruptured. Jon, caught in the edge of the blast, was launched against a wall—but the deadly heat and fragmentation passed harmlessly through him in the erased time.
Even so, his internal organs didn't appreciate the turbulence. His stomach churned. His ears rang.
The walls crumpled like paper. Screams rang out. Bodies were being sucked into the void.
Then Jon felt it—a terrifying pull.
Pressure drop.
A gaping hole had torn into the fuselage. The cabin decompressed, and Jon's body was violently sucked out into the open sky.
He was falling.
The world around him turned weightless. The sky above was painted with plumes of black smoke and twisted wreckage. Charred bodies spiraled through the air like broken marionettes. The elegant airship he had just been eating chicken in was now a ripped-open sarcophagus, still exploding in sections.
Jon didn't scream.
He'd faced Wilhelm's whip, Cirio's hellfire, and his own impending death more than once. This?
This was just a new kind of trial.
He looked down.
They were seven hundred meters up, and he was still falling.
"Stone Free!"
From his chest, the Stand erupted—its arms unraveling into threads like an industrial winch. With a snap of his fingers, Jon's falling body yanked against the extended thread—his muscles groaned under the strain, but he didn't stop.
"Ripple Breathing—NOW!"
He infused his threads with Ripple, letting them grip the shredded steel of the burning undercarriage of the airship.
With a violent pull, Jon was dragged upward toward the hull.
He gritted his teeth, arms trembling as he reeled himself in, swinging like a human grappling hook toward the belly of the disintegrating airship.
But fate wasn't done yet.
As Jon reached the airship's undercarriage, he saw it.
A bird. No—something like a bird, crashed into the airbag system.
Not a normal bird. A trained one, laden with explosives.
Jon's eyes widened. "Another one?!"
Epitaph.
Two seconds from now—another explosion. Direct hit. No time to run.
He let go.
The second explosion detonated right above him, scorching the air. The shockwave hit Jon mid-air like a battering ram and sent him plummeting even faster than before.
Spiraling through smoke and falling wreckage, Jon screamed.
"DAMN IT, OLD MAN JOESTAR! I DIDN'T SIGN UP TO BE A VEHICLE-KILLER!"
His body twisted in freefall, clothes flapping violently against the wind.
He had no parachute. No plan. No backup.
He was falling to Earth from nearly a kilometer in the air, and he had seconds to think.
Although only seconds had passed, Jon's descent had already brought him down to about 400 meters above the forest canopy.
This wasn't some Stone Ocean chopper rescue arc. No helicopter. No weather balloon. No parachute stand waiting conveniently in the background. He had been hurled out of a blown-up airship by sheer force—and thanks to that final explosion, his velocity had increased beyond what he could safely manage.
Line Conversion and Aura Binding techniques could probably keep him alive… but he wasn't exactly interested in slamming into the ground as a human omelette and waking up in a full-body cast.
His mind worked quickly, calculating options—and just then, something caught his eye.
Above him, floating like figures in a surreal dreamscape, were two people: a middle-aged man, and what looked like… a loli?
No—more accurately, a small girl clinging to the man's chest as the pair slowly descended with the help of a parachute.
"...Excuse me? A parachute?!" Jon squinted through the air currents and wind resistance.
They were airship passengers—just like him. So why did they get a parachute and not him? VIP upgrade? First-class passenger benefits? Was there a secret parachute club no one told him about?
"Same ship, different rights! This is discrimination!"
But then he remembered. Right. He hadn't even bought a proper ticket—he used his Hunter License to hitch a free ride. That realization took a bit of the wind out of his indignation. Still, Jon couldn't help but feel a pang of envy as they drifted like dandelions in the sky while he freefell like a flaming meteor.
No choice.
Jon extended his hand. "Stone Free — Stretching Fist!"
A pale blue arm unraveled from his chest, threads winding like an infinite cable toward the descending pair. It was a long shot—he was nearly 200 meters away—but maybe, just maybe, he could hitch a ride.
The fist reached—
—but before it could grab onto anything, the loli moved.
Without warning, a blast of Nen energy—a concentrated Mind Bullet—shot from her hand and slammed into Stone Free's fist, throwing it off course.
"What the—!?"
Jon reeled. That wasn't just a reflex attack. She had aimed with precision.
Before he could even shout an apology, more bullets came flying his way.
"Oi! All I did was ask for help! What are you, the air traffic police!?" he yelled, twisting midair to dodge.
His eyes narrowed. A faint, dangerous glint crept into his expression.
"If you insist on playing hardball…" Jon muttered darkly. "Then don't blame me for being ruthless."
But even as he prepared for a counterstrike, Jon's gut told him something else: those two weren't responsible for the explosion. Their clothes were scorched, expressions wild and desperate. The middle-aged man hadn't reacted to Stone Free at all—no aura, no defense, no recognition. He was likely a civilian.
The girl, though… she was something else.
Probably an Emitter, judging by how she launched those Mind Bullets. But there was always the possibility she was a Specialist or something more complicated—maybe even like Biscuit Krueger: a little body, hiding something ancient and terrifying.
Jon shook the thought away. No time.
He retracted Stone Free and focused on survival.
He remembered something from his past life.
"Cats can survive falls from the 25th floor."
Of course, humans couldn't. But Jon? Jon wasn't exactly human anymore.
With Ripple, Nen, and a line-based body thanks to Stone Free, he had an edge far beyond normal physiology.
He spread his limbs wide, relaxed his body, and began shaping his descent—flattening like a parachute. His Line-Converted form expanded slightly, turning his body into a living umbrella to catch as much air resistance as possible.
Wind screamed past his ears. His face stung from the force.
But the speed—was slowing.
From 300 meters... to 200... then 100...
Branches were now visible below. Tree canopies, thick with leaves, reached up like jagged green spikes.
60 meters. 40 meters... 20.
"Stone Free!"
Jon split his body into dozens of long, thin threads, shooting outward in every direction like grappling hooks. They wrapped around thick branches, some even slicing through leaves as they coiled.
The sudden jolt nearly snapped his spine—but he held on.
With a thud and a crash, Jon's body was yanked backward, his momentum arrested as he slammed into a cluster of branches. King Crimson erupted to brace the landing, and together they hit the forest floor like a cannonball wrapped in yarn.
Boom!
He didn't move at first.
He just lay there—panting. Covered in leaves. Drenched in sweat. Cloaked in dirt and shredded bark.
But he was alive.
His back was a mess—threads snapped, and the point where he'd stretched his limit was hollowed out like an open wound. One line was completely severed, blood trickling from where it had been anchored.
Still—no broken bones. No internal bleeding.
Jon grunted, slowly retracting his loose threads. A moment later, he summoned Ripple energy, pouring it into his body. Golden light danced along the wound, rapidly regenerating torn tissue. In seconds, the injury faded. The pain dulled.
Jon exhaled deeply.
"...Okay. I'm alive. Good start."
But now came the real problem.
He had no idea where he was.
Surrounded by endless forest, with only burned airship debris raining down in the distance, Jon stood up and scanned his surroundings. There was no signal, no path, no visible direction.
"Cut down a tree and count the rings? Sure. Let me just ask which direction Yorknew is carved in."
He sighed.
Satellite phone? Nope. His Hunter-issued phone was standard, not wilderness-rated. In this terrain, no bars.
"Of course," he muttered. "Can survive a fall from orbit, but can't check a GPS."
His only lead was those two odd survivors—the parachute man and the loli emitter. They might've had a map, or equipment, or at least a clue of where the hell they were. They had a direction.
And considering the explosion—this wasn't just bad luck. This was either a targeted assassination or an act of terrorism.
If it was a hit, someone on the ship was the target. Could've been the little girl. Could've been someone else entirely. Or, though unlikely, could've been… him.
Jon's gaze turned steely.
One way or another, he had to move—and quickly. This forest might not be safe, and if whoever planned the explosion was still watching, more trouble could be coming.
Jon cracked his knuckles.
"Alright, parachute gremlins. Looks like I'm paying you a visit after all~."
He summoned Stone Free once more, threads extending toward the treetops.
Time to start the chase.