Void Hunter Weapons in Zenless Zone Zero: Every Ability and Price
"Void Hunter" is New Eridu's highest official honor, given personally by the mayor to heroes who achieve extraordinary feats against the Hollow Disaster. But in the city's shadows, a more forbidden term circulates alongside it — "Void Hunter Weapons." Carole Arna once noted that every weapon seems to carry an unavoidable "price" behind it, and two known relics confirm exactly that: the Qingming Sword and the Ethereal-Slaying Katana Tailless. A third, Thaumiel, was later revealed to belong to the same category. All three grant their wielder the power of a Void Hunter — and all three take something back.
What Makes a Weapon a "Void Hunter Weapon"
Coined as an official term by Carole Arna, "Void Hunter Weapons" refers to ancient weapons forged using the power of the Hollows, capable of granting their wielder the might of a Void Hunter. It was later revealed that these weapons were made using Porcelloy to seal Karma Cores within them — the cores of Enchainers, The Creator's most powerful agents. After prolonged use, the price each weapon exacts will transform its wielder into an Enchainer themselves.
Because the Void Hunter Weapons and The Creator share the same origin, the side effects they inflict can be lifted by The Creator's power — and, in turn, the weapons themselves are capable of killing The Creator. The organization TOPS is currently searching for them, and a high-ranking official of the Krampus Compliance Authority has linked the term to the secret plans of a certain organization, suggesting the weapons are tied to power struggles among New Eridu's upper echelons rather than being simple armaments.
Tailless: Hoshimi Miyabi's Cursed Katana
Tailless is an heirloom katana forged from special Etheric Matter by the first-generation head of the Hoshimi Family, using secret techniques that left it holding surging Etheric energy. It is able to create Foxfire, a unique form of Etheric energy, and weave illusions out of it. Behind that power sits its origin: Tailless was forged from the Karma Core of an unnamed Enchainer slain by the first-generation Void Hunters, then passed down through the Hoshimi Family.
The price: Foxfire is described as a curse that has afflicted every head of the Hoshimi Family who carried it, consuming the strength and sanity of those who rely on it and spiraling them into a homicidal frenzy — "the fate of a Hoshimi is to kill." It has taken many lives as sacrifices, including Miyabi's mother. The blade's current wielder, Hoshimi Miyabi, struck a cooperation deal with the souls of the sacrificed trapped inside it to rewrite that fate: she swore to repay the injustice that forced them to be sacrificed and make a legend out of Tailless, and in exchange the katana heeds her and slays only evil. One of those souls called her "the second most arrogant person they have met" — "Swordmaster" is presumably the first. The blade also carries a fingerprint lock that prevents anyone but Miyabi from unsheathing it.
Qingming Sword: Ye Shunguang's Blade of Sacrifice
The Qingming Sword is the most prized relic of Yunkui Summit, a jian containing two opposing forces locked in constant battle — generating enough destructive energy to cause a disaster on the scale of the Fall of the Old Capital. Its wielders, called Qingming Sword Keepers, act as mediators who contain that energy, which grants them the ability of a Void Hunter for a short duration. Every High Preceptor of Yunkui Summit receives the sword as a symbol of their position, and when a wielder dies, the sword's power goes berserk and affects everything nearby.
The price: Each use gradually consumes the wielder's five senses and memories. This toll shaped generations of Qingming Sword Keepers — the eleventh High Preceptor's health slowly deteriorated as a result of using it, and Yijiang, its next wielder, ultimately chose to sacrifice herself to save both her sister Yixuan and Eridu from the expanding Hollow Zero. When the sword later chose Ye Shunguang, Yixuan gifted her a sword case built to seal the blade away and suppress its side effects, fearing the tragedy would repeat. Ye Shunguang used the sword's power to repel The Creator's influence during the Lemnian Hollow crisis, losing all her senses in the process, before recovering them through the remnant power of The Creator itself. When she later fought the Messenger of The Creator, Ye Shunguang fully mastered the Qingming Sword and has so far shown no sign of negative side effects — a feat that earned her the title of Void Hunter from Mayor Mayflower.
Thaumiel: Remielle Dan's Mechanical Wings
Thaumiel takes the form of a pair of four mechanical, razor-sharp wings — the smaller bottom half carrying four mechanical feathers, the larger top half fitted with jetpack-like boosters and two swords hidden in the metacarpus. The Karma Core sealed within it holds the power to halt the flow of time, letting its wielder control temporal patterns at any duration. Remielle Dan, one of the first-generation Void Hunters, used it as her signature weapon — most notably to push back the Dark Wall by thirty-seven kilometers.
The price: Thaumiel inflicts an internal Ether imbalance and mind degradation on its wielder. Partial fusion with the Karma Core still left Remielle able to replicate a smaller-scale version of its time-halting power without the weapon itself, reducing Ether activity in people and monsters to nigh zero and effectively petrifying them — a mark that appears as a feather resting on the affected target, turning them pale white. At some point Remielle discarded Thaumiel for unknown reasons, and it was sealed inside a colorless region of the Hollow behind a container only openable with a "key" like the Flint Porcelloy W-Engine. When TOPS later located it, Phaethon was drawn into unsealing the container in a trance, and Thaumiel merged with their body — transforming them into the Ethereal known as the Scorched Horizon, until Remielle arrived and extracted the weapon to revert Phaethon back to normal.
A Secret Bigger Than Any Single Blade
Is the title "Void Hunter" genuinely just an honor, and nothing else? Are these weapons truly meant to fight the Hollows, or do they share a deeper, more dangerous connection to the Hollows' own secrets? One detail hints at how tangled the answer might be: "Sunbringer" once took her own Karma Core and fragmented it into three parts, infusing them into three new selves — Eldreda Sunbringer, Lindverne Sunbringer, and Dracaene Sunbringer. Remielle claimed they were effectively living Void Hunter Weapons, before later admitting that claim was a lie, leaving the original Sunbringer's real reasons for the split unknown. Between the price each blade extracts and the shared origin they hold with The Creator, Tailless, the Qingming Sword, and Thaumiel look less like tools built to hunt the Void — and more like pieces of whatever the Void actually is.