Benkt had indeed grown dissatisfied over the Golden Throne being taken away, just as Ronin had expected.
And his method was exactly as Kurapika had predicted: he reported the matter through certain channels to officials of the Kingdom of Aite.
When the benefits were great enough, there would always be people who wanted to see if they could squeeze some profit out of it, even knowing how powerful the Rock Mercenaries were.
Especially when the central figure in this matter wasn't Muherr, but Ronin—an outsider attached to them. That only made those people with real authority even bolder.
Ronin had been prepared for this long ago.
When the trouble came, Muherr didn't even need to step forward. The team of officials who entered the ruins was attacked by a large number of spiders and forced to retreat with heavy casualties.
Ronin wasn't going to do anything too outrageous, but if someone climbed right onto his head and bullied him, doing nothing wasn't his style either.
Owl's Fun Fun Cloth could hold living creatures.
And if there was one thing the cave system didn't lack, it was spiders. By loading large numbers of spiders into the cloth and releasing them along the route the people searching for him had to take, the attacked squad would only think their luck was terrible.
No one could connect it to him.
After that, Ronin used the Shadow Clone Technique and openly left the ruins under everyone's eyes.
He was exploiting the timing gap: letting the other side know he had left, while also making sure they couldn't react quickly enough to catch him.
That way, even if they later connected the attack to him, they would have no evidence to accuse him.
The plan went off perfectly.
And not long after leaving the ruins, the shadow clone even deliberately exposed the Golden Throne in the distance.
That way, all the attention was drawn away.
From then on, Ronin's real body only needed to use the Transformation Technique to disguise himself, and no one would realize he was actually still inside the ruins.
As for whether the other side would cause trouble for Kurapika and the others—
according to Kurapika, let them come.
Clearly, Kurapika had already prepared a suitable response.
After Ronin and the others cleared the central passage, news that there were two living trees inside also reached V5 personnel.
Protected by the mercenary corps, those people entered the cave, confirmed the condition of the ancient trees, and collected samples from them.
The presence of the giant serpent made the staff entering the cave extremely nervous. So after completing the sample collection without provoking the serpent into attacking, they temporarily withdrew from the cave.
According to Muherr, several ancient trees with faint signs of life had also been discovered in the underground city.
As long as large amounts of flesh and blood were fed into them, there was a chance those trees could be revived.
V5 had already begun preparing for that, so they temporarily gave up on the idea of seizing the ancient trees inside the cave.
That surprised Ronin slightly, but the real reason was still the giant serpent.
The serpent was very strong. Ordinary bullets couldn't threaten it at all, and if they tried to forcefully kill it, there was a high chance the ancient trees would be damaged.
On top of that, the spiders constantly pouring out from the cliffside, as well as the creatures born from the giant tree, were all troublesome factors.
By comparison, the ancient trees in the underground city were far less troublesome. All they needed was flesh and blood.
In terms of returns, the two options were completely incomparable.
Before leaving, however, V5's experts installed quite a few monitoring devices in the cave space to keep track of the situation inside.
Although they wouldn't spend huge effort studying the ancient trees, they would still maintain the cave's ecosystem. That was also part of V5's usual way of doing things.
Ronin didn't care about the cave being monitored.
That kind of surveillance couldn't cover every angle without blind spots. So if he wanted to do something with the giant serpent, avoiding the cameras wouldn't be difficult.
At this point, all that remained was the exploration of the Kurta Clan's area.
V5's experts didn't intervene there. Instead, one exploration team after another continued to dig deeper into that region and investigate.
Time passed quietly amid that exploration, and soon it was late December.
During this period, Ronin didn't obtain any more useful clues. He only managed to roughly piece together what had happened to this branch of the Kurta Clan.
Everything was about the same as he had guessed.
The Chimera Ants had been deliberately released into the cave by the Kurta Clan in order to balance the cave's ecosystem.
But where had the Chimera Ants come from?
And why had this branch of the Kurta Clan chosen not to leave the underground and live on the surface?
They still hadn't found the reason.
The exploration was still ongoing. According to Muherr, this wasn't the kind of workload that could be finished in just a few months.
So Ronin temporarily handed matters here over to Kurapika, while he left the ruins with Neon and Abaki.
The Hunter Exam began on January 1st.
But it also ended on January 1st.
Everything was simple for Ronin, whether it was finding the exam venue or passing the tests arranged by the professional Hunters.
His method was the same as Killua's.
He simply dealt with all the competitors while they were gathered together in the first round.
As for the tasks arranged by the examiners?
To hell with them.
In the end, only three people would remain: Ronin, Neon, and Abaki.
Either the examiners accepted the three of them as Hunters, or Ronin would come back next year and sweep through everyone all over again.
The examiner didn't hesitate. After reporting the matter to Chairman Netero, Ronin and the other two passed the Hunter Exam with ease.
As for the great god Tonpa, they met him, knocked him out, and that was it. He didn't feel like a hidden boss at all. Just ordinary.
The Hunter in charge of the exam was helpless too.
The Hunter Exam was originally meant to find talented ordinary people with the potential to awaken Nen. Now three Nen users had suddenly dropped into the test group—and not even half-baked ones at that.
Of course it turned into a complete stomp.
After receiving his Hunter License, Ronin immediately returned to the ruins.
For the near future, he would stay there. Other than exploring the ruins and searching for traces of the Kurta Clan's existence, the only things left for him to do were search for the Scarlet Eyes and eliminate the Phantom Troupe.
The collection of the Scarlet Eyes was now mainly stuck on Kakin's prince.
That would have to wait until matters at the ruins were mostly settled and Kurapika had gathered enough intelligence before they could act.
As for the Phantom Troupe, after Feitan and the other two died, the remaining members had gone into hiding.
At least through Kurapika's channels, there had temporarily been no information about the Troupe.
Even Hisoka and the Zoldyck family hadn't been able to provide him with anything useful.
So for now, that matter could only be put aside.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 70 Chapters Ahead of Others!