Ronin coming closer completely crushed any thought of resistance the man had left.
After all of his cards had been confiscated by Ronin, he finally revealed who he was.
He really was one of the people hired by Battera, but from the mere handful of cards he handed over from his designated slots, it was obvious he was total bottom-tier trash.
No wonder he'd set his sights on newcomers.
Killing him would undoubtedly have been the fastest way to free up a player slot, but Ronin wasn't the type to slaughter innocent people indiscriminately.
So the question he asked was simple:
"Do you know where the harbor is?"
If the answer had been no, Ronin honestly wouldn't have minded getting rid of him. After all, this guy had been the one who approached them with bad intentions first.
If he died for that, then no one else could really be blamed.
Not killing indiscriminately and not killing at all were still two different things.
"I know. It's about fifty kilometers from Masadora. I marked it on the map I gave you," Zakari said nervously.
Because he could clearly feel the faint killing intent coming off Ronin.
He had no idea why Ronin was asking about the harbor, but he had a strong feeling the answer was directly tied to whether he lived or died.
And sure enough, once he answered, that killing intent slowly faded.
"Keeping him around could be useful for now as bait," Ronin said, laying out his plan. "Once we reach the harbor and get [Leave], we can send him out to Kurapika."
Zakari was smart enough to understand the situation. Even though he was basically being treated as bait, he immediately obediently took on the role of guide.
"If we keep heading due north, we'll reach Andoniba. A lot of players gather there, since it's basically the best place to earn supplies. There are bounty quests everywhere. If you keep going another eighty kilometers past Andoniba, you'll reach a lake. Masadora is northwest of that lake, and the harbor is directly west of Masadora."
When he finished, Zakari carefully glanced at Ronin.
"If you've got something to say, just say it," Ronin said, catching his hesitation.
"If you can get [Accompany], then I can take you straight to the harbor much faster," Zakari said, finally voicing his idea.
[Accompany]: After using this spell, all challengers within a twenty-meter radius, including the caster, will be flown to a designated location the caster has already visited, or to the current location of a designated challenger. (Only works on challengers you have already met in the game.)
That actually was a pretty good idea.
There were quite a lot of Accompany spell cards in circulation, 130 in total, but even so, Zakari didn't have a single one.
"I sold it," Zakari said weakly. "Spell cards actually sell for decent money, especially ones that let people move together. Those usually go for more than double the normal price. For a solo player like me, selling them is the most profitable choice."
"By the way, how far has the player base progressed toward clearing the game?" Ronin didn't dwell on that issue. Instead, he attached a chakra thread to Zakari's body to make sure he wouldn't run, then started asking about the state of the game.
That was one of the reasons he hadn't dealt with Zakari right away. No matter how useless the guy was, he was still a veteran player inside the game. He should at least know some non-confidential information.
"Not sure," Zakari said. "But people have already started forming raid groups to collect cards together. I got invited to one myself before, but I turned it down. Groups like that have already popped up on and off quite a few times, but they always end in infighting. I know my own level pretty well, so I have no intention of stepping into that mess."
Ronin nodded. That was completely normal.
Even though Battera's reward was still only 30 billion Jenny at this point, that was already no small amount.
Even for an average professional Hunter, earning that much money would take a huge amount of time.
While making money usually wasn't rated as especially difficult among Hunter jobs, it still undeniably required real effort.
From what Ronin knew, the Bomber trio had already started laying the groundwork five years before Gon and the others entered the game.
That meant their group should have been established about two years ago.
He didn't know whether Genthru and the others had already developed the ability [Sound of Life].
But since Ronin knew the full details of that ability, he wasn't worried about it being used on him.
Compared to crossing paths with the Bombers, though, he was actually more interested in meeting the game's final gatekeeper boss, Razor.
Not in beating him in a fight, but in beating him at dodgeball.
If he really managed to do that, Ronin wouldn't mind bringing three cards out of Greed Island with him.
But before challenging Razor, he first had to confirm whether any members of the Phantom Troupe were still inside the game.
The fact that the Troupe had managed to take Greed Island from Battera told him one thing for certain: Bonolenov must have been badly burned by Amaterasu, though not killed outright. Ronin could more or less work out why.
Nen.
In Naruto, something like a chakra cloak could easily solve the problem of Amaterasu's flames, and in the Hunter world, wasn't that basically equivalent to the layer of aura protecting a Nen user—Ten?
So if someone used Ten, and mastered the method of peeling that entire layer of aura off their body, they could counter Amaterasu.
It sounded simple, but in practice, completely shedding that whole layer of aura in one go was anything but easy.
And if the Troupe wanted to heal Bonolenov, then what they needed to collect was [Breath of Archangel].
But getting that card had prerequisites.
From the manga, Ronin knew that the prerequisite was collecting all forty spell cards before [Breath of Archangel] could be exchanged for.
And in the manga, right up until Gon and the others entered the game, no one had managed to obtain that valuable SS-rank card.
He didn't know whether people had been stuck on the difficulty of collecting all the spell cards, or whether they simply didn't know the condition required to exchange for the card.
If it was the former, then collecting them shouldn't be too hard for the Troupe, though it would still take some time.
If it was the latter, then Ronin thought there was a good chance the Troupe was still in Greed Island right now.
And if he could find them while they weren't all gathered together, then he had a chance to take out several Troupe members here.
"So do you know the condition for obtaining [Breath of Archangel]?" Ronin directly asked the key question.
Zakari shook his head. "That's the card Mr. Battera wants most. We only learned its details from the binder, but as for how to actually obtain it, no one's figured that out yet."
Ronin nodded. That was perfectly normal.
At this point, [Breath of Archangel] was probably still like [Strip of Beach]—it hadn't been triggered yet.
Only after satisfying the prerequisite trigger condition would people learn what they had to do to obtain the card.
So the key should be in Masadora.
That was the "source" of all spell cards, so any information about [Breath of Archangel] most likely existed there.
And if the Troupe had already learned something, then whether they were collecting spell…