The stone steles exclusively detailed horrific accounts of blood sacrifices.
The texts described horrific rituals where humans were slaughtered to harvest dark, immense power. The individuals who obtained this power were then dispatched into the "Beast Den" to wage war.
Based on the geographical descriptions, the so-called "Beast Den" perfectly aligned with the central monster tunnel.
As for the human livestock utilized in these blood sacrifices? They were entirely sourced from the deceptively 'ordinary' sector of the deep ruins—the peaceful-looking area equipped with cultivated farmland and the flowing underground river.
And every single individual who reaped the dark benefits of these blood sacrifices was explicitly described as possessing blood-red eyes!
They were members of the Kurta Clan!
Furthermore, fragments of text unearthed in the 'ordinary' sector referred to these red-eyed individuals using a moniker Ronin was all too familiar with: Red-Eyed Demons.
Given the context, the derogatory title was horrifyingly accurate. This was a clan that literally systematically harvested human beings for dark rituals.
Kurapika found the revelations sickening and incredibly difficult to process. Even if he logically knew this was an entirely different, ancient offshoot of his lineage, the undeniable evidence painted this specific Kurta faction as literal, unforgivable demons.
Ronin, on the other hand, withheld his final judgment.
In his mind, jumping to conclusions was pointless until they had fully infiltrated the central tunnel and verified the actual situation on the ground.
The ecosystem inside the central tunnel was far too anomalous. Moreover, a glaring logical inconsistency continued to bug him: why had the people in the 'ordinary' sector willingly stayed trapped underground instead of fleeing to the surface?
They had an active underground river. If they simply followed the current, it would eventually lead them to the outside world!
Yet, comprehensive sweeps of the ordinary sector had yielded absolutely zero evidence of escape attempts or rebellions.
There were no written records of planned exoduses, nor were there any physical signs of hastily constructed tunnels or fortified defenses. Nothing.
It was as if the human livestock had collectively accepted that remaining trapped in the dark and waiting for the slaughter was their best possible option!
Had the Kurta Clan deployed mass brainwashing techniques? Or was the surface world during that ancient era so unfathomably apocalyptic that being treated as ritual cattle was actually the safer alternative?
.....
The monsters residing in the central tunnel operated with the precision of a ticking time bomb.
The moment the clock struck midnight, an ungodly horde of beasts violently erupted from the darkness, surging outward like a tidal wave of flesh and teeth.
The military forces, however, were heavily entrenched and fully prepared. Artillery rained down on the advancing horde with zero regard for cost, tearing through the beasts in a sustained storm of lead and fire. Yet, despite the overwhelming firepower, the brutal meat grinder of a battle didn't truly end until around five or six in the morning.
The entire ruin was once again choked with the nauseating, metallic stench of fresh blood.
The soldiers immediately transitioned into cleanup duty, systematically dissecting the massive piles of monster corpses. Intact pelts, fangs, and claws were salvaged to be sold on the market, while the edible meat was packed onto transports and frozen.
If the V5 toxicology experts cleared the meat for human consumption, it would eventually find its way into the commercial food supply.
The side tunnels branching off from the main hall were also littered with carcasses, the result of the various independent exploration teams holding the line and exterminating the beasts that had managed to slip past the main barricades.
Ronin and the assembled strike team didn't bother waiting for the military to finish hosing down the blood.
The very second the flow of monsters from the central tunnel definitively stopped, they rallied at the entrance.
The assault squad consisted of exactly seventeen elite combatants. Among them, Ronin only personally recognized Mashuel, Vanessa, and the primary organizer, Bencot.
Acting as the de facto squad leader, Bencot skipped the motivational speeches. After rattling off a few critical safety protocols, he took point and marched directly into the suffocating darkness of the tunnel.
The air inside was thick with an eye-watering, pungent reek. Ronin had already strapped on a high-grade gas mask. While the filtered air wasn't exactly pleasant, it at least suppressed the urge to violently vomit.
If the atmospheric toxicity reached critical levels, he had emergency oxygen tanks securely packed away in his Fun Fun Cloth.
The stone walls of the passageway were heavily scarred with deep, overlapping claw marks. As they delved deeper, the low, guttural roars of unseen beasts continuously echoed from the abyss ahead.
It was blatantly obvious that the massive horde they had just slaughtered on the surface was only a fraction of the nest's total population.
After navigating the suffocatingly long tunnel, the claustrophobic walls suddenly fell away, and the environment drastically expanded.
The squad found themselves standing at the edge of a massive, subterranean forest.
Glancing upward, the cavern's soaring ceiling was embedded with countless clusters of luminescent stones. The soft, multi-colored light cascading down from the vault bathed the dense canopy below in an eerie, almost hallucinatory glow.
The beastly roars they had heard echoing through the tunnel were originating from deep within this very forest.
As the seventeen members of the squad filed out of the tunnel and formed up on the perimeter, a pack of beasts resembling heavily mutated tigers silently emerged from the tree line.
These creatures sported horrific insectoid mutations—chitinous plating and segmented joints—making them look even more lethal.
They immediately dropped into a low crouch, baring razor-sharp fangs as their eyes locked onto the intruders with predatory hostility. Low, rumbling growls of warning vibrated from their throats.
But Ronin and the others had literally just spent the entire night slaughtering hundreds of these exact same creatures during the beast wave.
Consequently, nobody paid the tiger-mutants any mind, immediately shifting their focus toward the distant horizon.
Looming in the distance was a gargantuan scorpion, easily standing several meters tall. It had seemingly detected the disturbance near the tunnel entrance. The massive creature slowly pivoted its armored bulk. Its primary pair of eyes swiveled wildly, while its three pairs of lateral eyes locked onto the squad with chilling precision.
Its colossal, segmented legs began churning up the earth as it moved aggressively toward Ronin's group.
Although Ronin couldn't detect any active Nen radiating from the beast, its sheer, overwhelming mass was enough to drain the color from the faces of several squad members.
During the massive beast wave on the surface, nobody had witnessed anything close to this monstrosity. However, the pre-mission intel packets Bencot had distributed explicitly documented the existence of these gargantuan insectoids.
Perhaps the tunnel was simply too narrow for it to squeeze through, or perhaps it operated under a different set of behavioral instincts. Regardless of the reason, this titan acted as a dedicated gatekeeper, strictly patrolling the territory immediately outside the tunnel.
The moment any intruder breached its domain, it would inevitably lock onto them.
This was the first time Ronin had laid eyes on a scorpion of this magnitude. What truly piqued his curiosity was whether or not the stinger at the end of its massive tail carried a lethal venom.
Since Bencot had already known about the giant scorpion, he naturally had a tactical countermeasure prepped and ready.
Before Ronin even considered making a move, two members of the squad simultaneously broke formation and advanced toward the charging behemoth.
One man gripped a heavy, vicious-looking javelin, while the other casually held a strange, flat disc in his hand.
The man with the disc struck first. He simply reared back and hurled it as far as he could.
The moment the disc struck the ground in the distance, it violently detonated, instantly deploying a massive, sprawling green net that completely blanketed the terrain directly in the scorpion's inevitable path.
Ronin blinked in mild surprise.
A trap? He hadn't expected the man's Conjuration ability to manifest as a static trap capable of operating independently from the user's immediate physical control.
Despite possessing eight eyes, a scorpion's actual visual acuity was notoriously poor. In combat, they primarily relied on their sensory hairs to detect vibrations and locate prey.
Furthermore, a scorpion's baseline intelligence was virtually non-existent.
So, even though the man had brazenly deployed the trap right in front of its face, the giant beast mindlessly marched forward, stepping directly into the center of the snare.
As the trap violently triggered, Ronin shifted his full attention to the second man, the one tightly gripping the heavy javelin.
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