Zeno Zoldyck

"Here's my card with my address and phone number. Let us know if you need anyone killed. For you, we can give 30% off."

- Zeno Zoldyck

Zeno Zoldyck (ゼノ＝ゾルディック, Zeno Zorudikku) is Killua's grandfather and Silva's father.

Appearance
Zeno is an old man of medium height with grey white hair that stands up on his head, he has a Fu Manchu mustache. He also wears alternating signs on his garb that say either "A Kill A Day" or "Never Retire". Most of the time he is seen with his hands behind his back.

Personality


While Zeno is a witty old man, his advancing age has not dampened his quick thinking and speed in battle. Despite his senior citizen status, he is a very formidable tactician and a skilled user of Nen. He remains calm and collected at all times and displays a unique sense of pragmatism. He takes satisfaction in being an efficient assassin and that seems to be his only conceit. Killing is just a job to him and emotion doesn't enter into it. He only risks his life if there is a reward to be gained. Zeno has high hopes on Killua, that is why he trusts the boy's ability.

While Zeno is violent and will kill without hesitation, he only does so when it is required to complete a contract; he avoids injuring innocents at all costs. Upon injuring Komugi accidentally, Zeno lost all desire to complete the contract on the Ant King and left, only after ensuring the fight between the King and the Chairman would not further injure civilians.

Background
Zeno is the previous patriarch of the Zoldyck family. He only had one son Silva, who was born from an unnamed mother. He is the grandson of Maha Zoldyck. Being a member of the Zoldycks, Zeno was trained in a tender age the art of assassination. He developed a great resistance against all types of poisons, and high tolerance of electricity.

He appears to be on good terms with the Hunters Association's Chairman Netero, who hired Zeno to assault Ming Jol-ik's palace in East Gorteau in order to catch the Chimera Ant King off guard.

Zoldyck Family arc
Zeno is first seen when he orders Milluki to let Killua go from the isolation chamber. He also tells Killua that his father Silva wants to talk to him. After Killua has left, he asks Milluki about his opinion on Killua. Milluki thinks that Killua is one of the best in the entire history of the Zoldyck family but he lets his emotion rise up on the surface, which makes Killua a failure as an assassin.

Yorknew City arc


After the massacre of a large number of Mafia gangsters by the Phantom Troupe, Zeno and Silva are hired by the Ten Mafia Dons to assassinate them. In the auction building in Yorknew City, after a number of other assassins who were also hired by the Mafia are killed, Zeno feels that this is not the job for them. Still, the two Zoldycks begin to search for the enemies in the building using Zeno's En, and finally they face Chrollo Lucilfer, the Troupe's leader. Chrollo admits to himself that it is quite difficult for him to take them on at the same time. Silva tells Zeno to be careful because Chrollo is capable of stealing other people's abilities.



Taking those words to heart, Zeno proceeds to attack Chrollo with Silva being the backup. Realizing that Zeno is an incredible fighter, Chrollo at first wants to steal his abilities but Zeno quickly deduces that he could only do so after a difficult set of conditions has been satisfied. And so, he uses his Dragon Head technique to constantly keep Chrollo at a distance. As the fight goes on, Chrollo has a moment of distraction because he has to watch Silva as well while dodging Zeno's attacks. Zeno takes the opportunity to close in and pin him against the wall while shouting to Silva to kill Chrollo without paying attention to him. Silva immediately throws two huge balls of aura at them, causing a large explosion at the ground level of the auction building.

Suddenly Illumi interrupts their fight by calling and telling Silva that the Ten Dons have been killed. With this, Silva and Zeno spare Chrollo's life because their clients were the Ten Dons; and now that they have been killed, he is no longer the target of the Zoldycks. When he and Silva are leaving, Chrollo asks Zeno about who he thinks would win in a one-on-one between him and Chrollo, to which Zeno replies that he himself would most probably win if Chrollo fought with stealing intent, but if Chrollo fought to kill then it would be a different story.

Chimera Ant arc


During the Chimera Ant arc, it is revealed that Zeno is an acquaintance of Chairman Netero of the Hunters Association, and is hired by him to assist him in an assault on the Ant King Meruem's palace, formerly belonging to the dictator Ming Jol-ik, in the Republic of East Gorteau. The two of them fly to the palace on a dragon created from Zeno's Nen. When they arrive, they are detected by Neferpitou and Shaiapouf. Zeno then breaks the dragon into a myriad of smaller dragons, which rain down upon the palace from the sky. At the same time, he and Netero dive towards the palace. The dragons pierce through the palace and seriously injure Komugi, a normal human girl, by accident. Seeing that he has accidentally harmed an innocent and the King's caring attitude towards her, Zeno decides to quit the job, but not before making a Nen dragon to carry Netero and the King to a remote location so that they could battle each other with minimum human casualties.

As he is leaving, he meets Gon and his grandson Killua, who are members of the Extermination Team of Hunters and ant defectors that have infiltrated into the palace, and tells them to judge what have happened inside — an ant trying to save the life of a human girl — for themselves. He encounters another ant, Cheetu, outside the palace, who follows him and tries to pick a fight with him to show off his new techniques. Zeno ignores Cheetu's incitement and tells him to look behind him. Thinking that Zeno is trying to use the oldest trick in the book on him, Cheetu keeps following Zeno, and his head is suddenly smashed by a descending Silva, who has come to pick up his father, in a single punch. The two Zoldycks leave the Republic of East Gorteau on a dragon. Zeno tells his son that he met Killua, and that Killua may have removed Illumi's needle from his brain, and that the mission was the most incredible experience he has ever had because time seemed to start moving really slowly, which implies that facing the King was the closest to death he has ever been.

13th Hunter Chairman Election arc
Zeno does not formally appear during this arc. However, Killua mentions that like Silva, Zeno wants to keep Alluka close in order to control him, and that Zeno doesn't want Killua to be in danger. Regarding Zeno's relationship with the rest of the family, he has a give-and-take relationship with Silva and Illumi, and favors Killua more than his other brothers.

Abilities & Powers
Zeno is undoubtedly one of the strongest characters in the series. Most of his power seems to derive from his skills in Nen, but his training as an assassin and analytical mind prove to be no less relevant. His name alone is enough to frighten most opponents, with good reason. His strength does not seem to have waned with age; if anything, it has made him more experienced. He has probably undergone the standard Zoldyck training, growing nearly immune to electricity, pain and poison. Even Chrollo Lucilfer, who is forty years younger than him, would undoubtedly lose in a duel if he does not use his full strength. When the two clashed, the leader of the Troupe focused nearly exclusively on him despite Silva being present too. Neferpitou, a member of the Royal Guard, grew very excited to confront him, having sensed his power through its En; On the other hand, Zeno remained undaunted by the immense aura of the Ant. A further testament to his strength is the fact that, despite being very prudent in a battle, he did not hesitate to turn his back to Cheetu, a Squadron Leader Chimera Ant.

Immense strength: Zeno can effortlessly lift debris bigger than him. Far more remarkable, he landed uninjured after leaping off his Transmuted dragon at a height of at least two thousand meters (the length of one of the tendrils of Neferpitou's En).

Enhanced speed and reflexes: Zeno is fast enough to match Chrollo's and Silva's speed. His reactions are fast enough for him to catch Chrollo's kick at a very close distance while unleashing a barrage of punches.

Enhanced agility: Zeno can cover long distances with only one jump. He landed gracefully after a free fall of two kilometers.

Immense stamina: Although he complains using En is tiring, he deployed it with a radius of 100 m, which is twice the area a master can cover.

High intelligence: Zeno has a keen intellect and a considerable dose of experience to back it up. He is extremely analytical in a battle, reading the mind of genius fighters like Chrollo in an instant and coming up with perfect countermeasures (in fact, he was not hit even once).

Proficient in hand-to-hand combat: Zeno might be superior to Chrollo in physical combat; he drew blood from the latter with a strike with the side of his hand, and later restrained him by grabbing his leg and cornering him with a series of extremely fast punches.

Nen
Zeno is arguably one of the best Nen users in the Hunter × Hunter universe. He is a Transmuter, and fight shaping his aura in dragonesque figures. His abilities in Emission, however, are just as great, since he can shoot powerful blasts of aura and, even more impressive, create dragons that act as means of transport for himself or other people for a prolonged amount of time. Furthermore, he is also exceptionally good at using En. It is said that a Nen master can have an En of 50 m in radius but Zeno stated that he could do a 300-m-in-radius En without any problem. Chrollo also admired his skills in Ryu, thinking that if Zeno managed to attack him with the hand in which he had concentrated his aura, his guard would not be enough to stop the blow. The mere sight of Zeno's Ryu convinced him to resort to his Hatsu. Judging from the comments made by the leader of the Phantom Troupe during their fight, it is possible that Zeno is even superior to his son in Nen.

Trivia

 * Zeno's exceptional En range was mentioned but not shown in the 2011 anime.
 * Zeno's Dragon Lance ability resembles Hiei's Dragon of the Darkness Flame from YuYu Hakusho.
 * Zeno compared himself and Isaac Netero to the elements of yin and yang respectively.
 * Zeno is the only character who talks directly to the reader in the manga, explaining Isaac Netero's past, his ties to the Zoldycks and the phenomenon for which the perception of time is compressed during a tough fight, all in an interview-like fashion. He also clearly stated that he is not as powerful as the former chairman.

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