Before the blood pillar could enter Blinky's mouth, one crow after another began forming within it and struggling to drill their way out.
After the crows flew free, they let out cawing cries and shot toward Shizuku at high speed.
Clearly, they had identified Shizuku as the greatest threat.
However, Shizuku had already torn open the scroll, so before the crows could get close, a curtain of water blocked their path.
It was Water Release: Water Formation Wall!
One crow after another crashed into the water wall, but they could not pierce through it at all.
They only had a weak layer of Nen on their bodies. These things, conjured from blood, had very limited power.
The blood pillar being pulled by Blinky, however, could pass through the water wall and enter Blinky's mouth directly.
More and more crows began crawling out of the bloodwater being drawn up from the ground. They did not dare charge toward Shizuku anymore, so they could only turn and rush toward several other positions.
Susanoo was quickly covered in blood, but this level of attack meant nothing to Ronin.
Still, he knew that not everyone had the ability to defend against the crows' attacks. So he simply threw out several scrolls.
Shadow clones appeared out of thin air, and Water Formation Walls rose in several locations, completely blocking the crows' assault from every direction.
During this process, the number of something was rapidly decreasing.
But Ronin slowly noticed that there was an even taller and stronger blue giant lingering nearby without taking action.
More importantly, at some point, a strange crow had appeared on the blue giant's shoulder.
It was a crow wrapped entirely in scarlet Nen.
Most importantly, this crow no longer had only one pair of eyes. When Ronin looked toward it, the countless eyes on the crow's head all looked back at Ronin at the same time.
The next second, the situation around Ronin changed.
He lowered his head and saw that an eye had strangely opened on his arm. And as that eye appeared, a crow slowly began forming as well, struggling to drill out from his skin.
But the scene changed again the very next second.
The main subject was no longer Ronin.
Instead, the ugly crow standing on the giant's shoulder, its head covered in eyes, suddenly tilted its head.
Because it saw one of its own eyes suddenly fall from its socket and drop into the mud below.
Then, as it tilted its head, it felt another slight sensation in its eye socket, and another eyeball slipped out.
"Caw!"
The crow let out a cry filled with fear.
But along with its cry, more and more eyes began falling uncontrollably from their sockets.
Just as the last eye was about to fall out, the crow saw the giant beneath it suddenly raise a massive foot. Under its disbelieving gaze, that foot stomped down on the countless eyes that had fallen to the ground.
The moment that foot landed, the crow felt its vision go black.
Its world fell completely into darkness.
In the next second, an icy voice came from behind the crow. At the same time, the crow felt its vision return, and it could see again.
But it also felt a large hand gripping it.
"Genjutsu? Looks like you chose the wrong target," Ronin said, his tone carrying faint mockery.
The instant his gaze met the crow's, Ronin had sensed something was wrong.
He simply had never expected that the crow would actually cast an illusion on him, the owner of the Sharingan.
That was practically showing off tricks before an expert.
So Ronin did not hesitate at all. He directly activated Sharingan genjutsu and countered it.
At the same time, he controlled Susanoo to directly kill the tall blue-skinned giant, while in reality, he grabbed the crow that had fallen into the illusion.
Aside from being larger and stronger, the blue-skinned giant had no other special traits.
But those traits were completely useless before Susanoo. Their strength was not on the same level at all.
Now that Ronin had grabbed the strange crow, he was also curious.
Was this thing the crow statue he had seen in the giant's memories?
It seemed somewhat smaller.
The crow's dozens of eyes all turned toward Ronin at once.
Ronin could feel that the moment their gazes met, the other party activated genjutsu again.
But that illusion meant nothing to Ronin.
Because the instant the illusion struck him, what appeared in the crow's mind was the image of its own body being pierced through by several iron spikes.
A miserable cry once again came from the crow's mouth.
Ronin also confirmed it.
This crow should be a Specialist-type existence.
It had three abilities.
The first was a Manipulation-type ability. However, for the time being, he had not figured out the exact conditions for how it took effect.
All he knew was that after the crow fulfilled certain conditions, it completed its control over the giants.
The second was illusion.
When its countless eyes met the target's gaze, the illusion would activate.
The third was a Conjuration-type ability. However, this ability required it to complete control over the giants in advance, and it could only be activated after a giant died or lost a large amount of blood.
Ronin casually took out a handkerchief and covered the crow's head with it.
Although he was not afraid of illusions, aside from him, the others in the team might really fall victim to this crow's tricks.
Ronin then activated a sealing technique and directly imprisoned the crow's Nen.
Once he finished sealing the crow, no new crows were born from the bloodwater on the ground that had yet to be fully sucked dry.
Even the giants that had not been killed suddenly stopped moving.
The bloodthirsty, crazed look in their eyes quickly turned into fear after they saw the large number of headless giant corpses on the ground.
Then the giants, now clear-headed, turned and ran.
"Should we chase them?" Kurapika approached and asked.
But he actually already had the answer, because Ronin's shadow clones had not moved.
So after asking, Kurapika's gaze also fell on the crow Ronin was holding.
"Is there only this one?" Ging also came over at this moment. He likewise had no interest in pursuing the giants.
After all, only a dozen or so giants had escaped. They could not build any momentum at all, nor did they pose a real threat.
"Not sure." Ronin shook his head.
"Then let's go find out," Kurapika suggested.
"Let's clean up first and change into raincoats," Ronin suggested.
The heavy rain had long since soaked everyone through. Combined with the wind blowing through, continuing forward like this could easily lead to hypothermia or catching a cold.
Shizuku nodded. She first released the blood, then brought the house back out.
Half an hour later, the group put on raincoats and changed into rain boots. Stepping across the muddy ground, they left the place filled with giant corpses and followed the tracks left in the rain toward the direction the giants had come from.
The crow was no longer in Ronin's hand.
He had temporarily placed it inside his backpack.