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Chapter 101: Volleyball
Clearing them out one by one was simply too slow.
With the Sharingan already serving as Ronin's default state, executing ninjutsu came to him as naturally as breathing. Especially after he fully retracted his Nen and converted it into chakra, strands of chakra transformed into puppet threads, shooting forward toward the private soldiers ahead.
[Performance: Human Body Manipulation]
This ability, which Ronin had acquired by controlling Owl, now fully displayed its terrifying power.
Gunfire echoed throughout the manor, but the gunfire wasn't entirely directed at Ronin. Instead, one private soldier after another, now puppeted by the chakra threads attached to their bodies, turned their weapons on their own comrades.
It was absolute chaos.
Ronin's fingers danced in a blur. Even after the living puppets under his control died, their corpses continued to pull the trigger.
The battle rapidly devolved from the soldiers' initial overwhelming confidence at facing a mere two intruders, into utter psychological collapse as they watched the corpses of their brothers continuously fire upon them. Meanwhile, the two intruders casually strolled toward the villa as if strolling through an unpopulated wasteland.
Yet, no one chose to flee. A portion of the men went completely mad, disregarding the firing corpses and charging directly at Ronin and Shizuku. The rest gave up all resistance, dropping their weapons and kneeling on the ground to await the arrival of death.
The former group instantly became fresh puppets for the slaughter, quickly transitioning from living dolls to dead ones. The latter group, however, Ronin deliberately spared.
He had little interest in striking down those who had already lost their will to fight. Shizuku, however, chose this exact moment to take action.
By the time Ronin and Shizuku passed through, nearly a hundred men in the front courtyard had been slaughtered to the last man. Yet, no corpses remained on the ground. There were no bloodstains, no discarded firearms. Everything had been sucked cleanly into Shizuku's [Blinky].
It was as if an infinitely vast storage space existed within the vacuum cleaner's stomach, capable of swallowing everything.
Without missing a beat, Ronin pushed open the main doors to the villa.
The interior was completely deserted. It was unclear whether the occupants had hidden themselves away in terror from the massacre outside, or if they had already been evacuated.
Ronin hadn't invested much time developing his [En], so its radius only extended about twenty meters. While this distance wasn't enough to cover the entire villa, as the two ventured deeper, most of the objects and presences inside naturally fell within his sensory range.
Inside a nearby room, two individuals radiating auras far more intense than ordinary people stood out as the most distinct presences within his [En]. Additionally, Ronin detected a faint, dying presence down in the basement.
Ronin paused his steps. "Is your father dead?"
"I don't know," Shizuku replied, remaining entirely expressionless despite the bluntness of the question.
"Do you want to go down and check? It might be him." Ronin had considered a possibility—a sudden intuition that arose the moment he sensed the dying figure beneath them.
And sometimes, the instincts of an Enhancer were terrifyingly accurate.
Shizuku hesitated for a moment. "Okay."
As she turned toward the staircase leading down, Ronin called out from behind her, "Be careful."
The moment the words left his mouth, a hole was violently blasted through the door of the room ahead. A tennis ball shot out at breakneck speed, aiming directly for the back of Shizuku's head.
Shizuku abruptly spun around, [Blinky] already materialized in her hands. Instead of activating its suction, she swung the vacuum's mouth like a racket.
Bang!
[Blinky] swatted the ball away. But in that split second, Ronin noticed a glowing number "0" appear directly above Shizuku's head.
It was a number constructed entirely out of Nen.
Ronin glanced down at his feet. White lines had been drawn across the floor, and when connected to the ruined door leading into the room, it formed the unmistakable layout of a tennis court. At the same time, an umpire's chair and a long net materialized in the doorway.
A man stood inside the room. He was nearly two meters tall, heavily built, holding a tennis racket, and dressed in a tennis cap, shorts, and a polo shirt. His deep-set features were stern, and his hawk-like gaze locked fiercely onto Shizuku.
It was Spence, who had evidently come up from the underground level.
Standing beside Spence was another man, dressed impeccably as a butler, with perfectly groomed hair and a pair of spotless white gloves. This man's gaze was fixed entirely on Ronin.
Ronin's earlier warning wasn't about the two men in the room; he had just wanted Shizuku to watch out for traps on the stairs. He hadn't expected the duo to launch a preemptive strike.
Upon seeing the man in the room, Shizuku instantly called out his name: "Spence!"
Ronin had already guessed as much the moment he sensed the man's presence.
"Your opponent is me," the butler declared, stepping into Ronin's line of sight.
Ronin also noted that the man had positioned himself quite close to the only materialized chair on the court.
A court, a scoring system...
Ronin's mind rapidly synthesized the intelligence, instantly deducing the significance of that high chair.
An umpire!
In a tennis match, that was exactly where the umpire sat. By that logic, since neither he nor the butler had taken the seat, did that make them the ball boys? A ball boy's role in a match was simply to retrieve balls, sweep the court, and hand out towels. The umpire held far more authority.
But did Ronin actually need to play by their rules?
As he thought this, coins materialized in Ronin's hands. He flicked a handful of them toward Spence on the court, while throwing another volley directly at the butler.
The moment the coins crossed the boundary of the court, Spence violently swung his racket. In that instant, Ronin watched the airborne coins physically transform into tennis balls. The racket smashed into them, sending them rocketing toward Shizuku at an even greater velocity.
On the other side, the butler sidestepped, easily dodging the barrage of coins before raising his arms into a combat stance.
Shizuku's expression was hyper-focused, taking in everything unfolding on the court. While the coins turning into tennis balls was sudden, she accepted it in stride. Still treating [Blinky] as a racket, she swung it hard, preparing to smash the incoming ball back.
But mid-flight, the tennis ball reverted to its original form—a coin.
Sensing the massive volume of Nen attached to the coin, Shizuku felt a flash of danger. She sharply diverted her swing, deliberately missing the coin.
The coin flew out of bounds, and the number above Shizuku's head instantly changed from 0 to 15.
By then, Spence had already tossed a hand grenade into the air. Without hesitation, he swung his racket at it. The grenade transformed into a tennis ball upon impact, rocketing toward Shizuku before instantly reverting back into a live grenade mid-air.
"Inhale the grenade and spit it back out," Shizuku muttered softly.
As she spoke, her hand pressed the switch on [Blinky]. A terrifying suction force erupted, swallowing the grenade whole. But a split second later, the vacuum's suction cut off, and the explosive was violently blasted back out of its mouth, shooting straight for Spence!
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