When Ronin finished writing his name, everything changed.
A feeling rose in his heart: from now on, as long as he completed the hand seals, he could summon this giant snake at any time.
As for whether the snake he summoned would actually be his ally, that was another matter.
After all, the giant snake being pinned down by the rock giant was still looking at him with hatred and fury in its eyes.
Ronin simply rolled up the scroll and released the Gōremu-style technique at the same time.
The moment the giant snake was freed, it immediately tried to attack Ronin again, but Susanoo completed a second suppression in an instant.
The giant snake continued struggling, but its eyes had become much clearer.
"I don't know whether you understand me or not, but I'm not trying to kill you. I'm trying to enslave you," Ronin said, sounding like a true villain.
He looked down at the giant snake from above, and the Susanoo surrounding him placed enormous pressure on it.
"Submit, or keep being suppressed by me."
Ronin had no intention of killing it.
After all, this was the first being he had completed a contract with, the first existence he could summon. He couldn't bear to let it die here just like that.
There was still anger in the giant snake's eyes, but its body stopped struggling.
After being suppressed twice in a row, it could tell that it was no match for the human in front of it.
And it wasn't some ignorant beast either. It truly understood the choices Ronin had given it.
The problem was that neither choice was acceptable to it.
Even greater force erupted from the arm of Susanoo pinning it down, pressing the giant snake tightly against the ground.
Ronin, meanwhile, began considering whether he should leave something on the snake to make it more obedient.
At that moment, the giant snake finally sensed danger and malice from Ronin.
It was just that he couldn't kill it. But Ronin still had other ways to deal with it.
The giant snake stopped struggling and lowered its head on its own.
That meant submission.
It didn't want to die.
Ronin was actually a little pleasantly surprised. He had thought this giant snake would be difficult to tame, but it seemed he had overthought things.
"So, can you understand me?" Ronin asked again.
At the same time, Susanoo loosened the pressure on the giant snake, giving it some room to move.
But Susanoo's raised hand also clenched into a fist. If the giant snake dared to attack, that fist would land precisely on its head.
The giant snake studied Ronin carefully. After a long while, it slowly nodded.
"Then can you leave this place?" Ronin gestured toward the cave.
This was one of the questions he cared about most. If the giant snake could leave the cave, then he would need to consider other problems.
For example, where exactly he should place it.
After all, this cave wasn't really a good place. The threat from the spiders was very real.
But there were also things here that made him curious, namely those two giant trees.
The giant snake's answer was to shake its head.
Then it turned its gaze toward the giant tree. Ronin followed its line of sight, but he couldn't make out anything meaningful.
Only after Susanoo fully released it, and the giant snake slowly moved back up the tree before tearing off one of the eggs and swallowing it, did Ronin understand what it meant.
The eggs on the giant tree were the giant snake's food.
Looking at it this way, the giant snake and the giant tree seemed to have a symbiotic relationship.
The giant tree produced food for the snake, while the snake coiled around the tree and protected it.
And another vital part of this ecosystem was the seemingly endless swarm of spiders. They were nutrients for the giant tree.
Under normal circumstances, the fire-fearing monsters born from the giant tree would be enough to resist the spiders' attacks, even hunting spiders and feeding them to the tree.
The only variable was probably the Chimera Ants that had lived here before.
After figuring out the situation here, Ronin had a hunch: the Chimera Ants had been deliberately placed here by someone, in order to restore balance to the situation where the giant tree was gradually falling into disadvantage under the spiders' assault.
If that was the case, then as long as he could maintain the balance here, it didn't matter if the Chimera Ants were dead.
As for the fact that the giant snake couldn't leave, Ronin didn't care at all.
In fact, that saved him trouble.
Otherwise, feeding such a massive snake for a year would cost an unknown amount of resources.
While using the Mystical Palm Technique to heal the giant snake, Ronin slowly explained his idea to it.
The giant snake was worried about only two things.
First, its own life.
Second, its food source—in other words, the life of the giant tree.
Ronin gave assurances for both.
That made the giant snake wonder what the point of Ronin attacking it earlier had been. If he had just said all of this directly, these excellent conditions would have given it no reason to refuse.
That made the way the giant snake looked at Ronin turn somewhat resentful.
But that resentment completely disappeared after Ronin tried using the Summoning Technique to call it forth.
The experience of suddenly being transported from one place to another out of thin air finally made the giant snake understand exactly what Ronin had done to it.
Not that it had any right to choose.
According to Ronin, from the moment the contract was planted, the giant snake had become his pet.
That was rather insulting to a snake, but the giant snake reluctantly accepted it.
And as the man and snake gradually became more familiar with each other, Kurapika and the others also entered the cave and discovered the situation here.
They did not return the golden throne they had seized.
That thing's value couldn't be properly realized inside this cave. Only by sending it to the Yorknew auction and putting it up for sale could it truly bring Ronin value.
According to Mascher's estimate, that thing could sell for at least several billion, maybe even tens of billions.
However, Kurapika and Neon had completely different views. Both of them believed that even ten billion wouldn't be enough.
The golden throne should be worth an enormous amount, especially if they could attach a suitable little story to it. That would greatly increase its value.
And one had to remember: beneath the place where the throne was found lay an ancient city.
"Benkt and the others probably won't just let this go," Kurapika said. "They know the value of this golden throne too. If they tell the royal family of the Aite Kingdom about it, it may cause unnecessary trouble."
"Yeah. Then we'll stage a 'golden cicada shedding its shell' trick for the royal family to see," Ronin said.
With his strength, he could actually slaughter the entire royal family of the Aite Kingdom by himself, but he would not do that.
Because even if he used shadow clones to do it, there would still be a risk of the truth being investigated.
There were no shortage of talented people in this world, and there was no way to know what kind of bizarre Nen abilities those people might possess.
So unless absolutely necessary, Ronin had one rule: never do something that, if exposed, would turn him into a public enemy.
Especially as his strength continued to grow, he had to become even stricter with himself.
There was one thing he had to remember at all times:
he had not truly reached the point of being invincible under heaven.