"The distortion is definitely speeding up," Ronin muttered, holding up a standard wooden pencil. He had deliberately placed it inside the ruins exactly twenty-four hours ago.
Now, it was permanently twisted into a tight, impossible spiral.
"And the flora on the ground is glowing significantly brighter," Kurapika added, stating another undeniable fact.
His implication was clear: he believed the strange, blue, spiraling plants blanketing the deeper ruins were the source of the anomaly.
The pale light emanating from those plants fully illuminated the ancient structures, but it was also triggering utterly inexplicable phenomena.
"The energy coating those vortex plants and emitting that light... it feels exactly like a Nen user's Ten," Ronin said, fully backing Kurapika's hypothesis.
Even now, he found the reality hard to swallow. How could simple vegetation manifest Ten?
It was especially baffling considering how pathetically fragile the vortex plants were. Even an ordinary human could casually uproot and crush one without effort.
Yet, these incredibly weak organisms were undeniably projecting Ten.
Furthermore, the intensity of their Ten was steadily amplifying in direct proportion to the number of people flooding into the ruins. It was as if the carpet of blue vegetation was actively siphoning life energy from anyone who crossed its path.
But there was a glaring flaw in that theory: Ronin's Shadow Clones had never reported feeling their life energy being drained.
So how exactly were these plants fueling their growth?
Surely, the mere act of physically warping inanimate objects couldn't be the mechanism sustaining them?
Ronin had meticulously examined the distorted items, and he couldn't detect a single trace of residual Nen on them. Energy couldn't just spontaneously generate from nothing; there had to be a crucial variable they were entirely overlooking.
Setting aside the escalating vortex crisis, a few exploration teams had ventured into the blood-soaked sector of the ruins and uncovered numerous stone steles extensively documenting ancient sacrificial rituals.
Ronin was only interested in the text itself. By throwing around massive stacks of Jenny, he easily bought the rights to photograph and study the engravings.
While the script shared similarities with the Kurta Clan Prayer, there were distinct, noticeable differences.
Given his current academic limitations, Ronin obviously couldn't decipher it himself. The most efficient solution was to log onto the Hunter website and post a lucrative bounty for immediate translation services.
He didn't even have to leave his makeshift base camp to receive the fully translated documents within hours.
Through this entire ordeal, Ronin was forced to acknowledge an annoying reality.
Archaeological excavation and historical research was an obscenely expensive endeavor. If someone just wanted to strip a ruin of its valuables and sell them on the black market, they could turn a massive profit. But if someone possessed a genuine thirst to uncover ancient truths, they either needed a vast reservoir of specialized knowledge, or an ocean of money to buy it.
Ronin wasn't going to miraculously acquire a doctorate in dead languages anytime soon, but he was more than willing to pay to learn.
Unearthing the secrets of the ruins wasn't a task that could be completed in a day or two. This was further complicated by the fact that the central tunnel violently erupted with a massive horde of monsters every few days, launching indiscriminate attacks on anyone currently inside the ruins.
It was as if the central passageway was a programmed monster spawn point.
Unless the source was destroyed, the military and the independent explorers could slaughter the beasts indefinitely, and a fresh wave would simply spawn to replace them a few days later.
While holding down the right-hand tunnel, Ronin was approached by a representative from the Hunter Association.
The man introduced himself as Bencot.
Bencot's goal was simple: rally the strongest combatants currently in the ruins into a single alliance to launch a coordinated strike on the central tunnel's monster nest.
The ultimate goal was to push deep into the Beast Den, discover the mechanism allowing the monsters to breed at such an absurd rate, and permanently neutralize it.
Only by removing this constant, looming threat could the various teams finally explore the ruins in peace, rather than constantly looking over their shoulders in fear of the next bloody ambush.
Ronin had zero objections to the proposal.
Ever since he had claimed the right-hand tunnel as his territory, he had been the one personally cleaning up the vast majority of the straggler monsters that spilled into his sector during every major wave.
While the volume of monsters that managed to breach his tunnel wasn't overwhelming, constantly dealing with them was a massive drain on his time and focus.
More importantly, Ronin had clearly noticed a disturbing trend: as the days dragged on, the sheer volume of monsters in each subsequent wave was steadily compounding.
If left unchecked, it wouldn't be long before the central tunnel mutated into an apocalyptic threat.
Mashuel was also currently stationed at Ronin's camp, acting as the official voice for Muhuell and the mercenaries.
His reason for being there was identical to Bencot's: addressing the escalating crisis in the central tunnel.
The giant spiders inhabiting the underground city had been thoroughly eradicated. However, during the purge, the teams had discovered a massive vertical shaft bored into the cavern roof that connected directly to the central monster tunnel!
Muhuell theorized that the sudden spike in monsters was a direct result of the spiders being wiped out.
Before the explorers arrived, the spider colony and the monsters in the nest had maintained a brutal, delicate ecological equilibrium.
But when the spiders inexplicably rioted, the explorers were forced to exterminate them, completely shattering that balance.
However, even factoring in the missing predators, the reproductive speed of the monsters in the nest was still mathematically impossible.
The V5 experts had pitched a terrifying hypothesis: the societal structure within the central nest was likely akin to an ant colony or a beehive. There was a central 'Queen' or 'Mother' continuously spawning new generations.
Therefore, if a strike team could infiltrate the depths, locate the Mother, and assassinate her, the monster population would instantly crash, permanently halting their reproduction.
From there, it would just be a matter of mopping up the remaining stragglers, entirely eliminating the risk of future ambushes.
Ronin formally accepted Bencot's invitation.
He was pragmatic enough to understand the value of overwhelming numbers.
The operation was scheduled to launch in exactly two days. According to their predictive models, the next massive monster wave would hit tomorrow.
The optimal window to invade the central zone was immediately after they broke the back of the incoming wave.
.....
Ronin no longer needed to maintain constant surveillance over the Kurta ruins with his Shadow Clones.
If an experienced explorer genuinely wanted to conceal a high-value artifact, trying to catch them in the act was an exercise in futility, even with a clone watching.
Setting aside the wildly unpredictable and bizarre nature of Nen abilities, a veteran explorer had a dozen mundane tricks to distract a watcher long enough to pocket a prize.
Under normal circumstances, Ronin couldn't just casually murder people on mere suspicion. So, instead of playing prison guard, it was far more effective to use pure financial incentive to coax the explorers into willingly handing over their discoveries.
If an item held genuine historical value, Ronin paid handsomely for it. If it was junk, they parted ways amicably.
This open-market approach made Ronin and his crew look more like eccentric antique dealers camping at the entrance, which vastly improved their reputation among the delving teams.
Ronin's initial, heavy-handed blockade had left many harboring deep-seated resentment and paranoia toward him.
But his willingness to drop massive amounts of cash to simply acquire photos of the stone steles had significantly thawed the tension.
However, once the newly acquired translations finally came through, both Ronin and Kurapika found themselves staring at the documents with deeply furrowed brows.
----
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