Behind the stone door lay the Masked Man's destination for this journey.
Unlike the Scarecrow, he did not actively seek to eliminate humans.
However, if encountered, he would regard them as obstacles.
Mascher was actually unlucky, running into the Masked Man in the passageway.
If he had turned and fled without hesitation at that time, he might not have been treated as an obstacle by the Masked Man and could have survived.
In the Masked Man's eyes, killing Mascher was akin to an ordinary person walking along a road and casually kicking away a pebble… its importance was terrifyingly low.
This casual, matter-of-fact stance made Mascher's sacrifice seem all the more cheap.
The Masked Man approached the massive stone door. The three white swallowtail butterflies never strayed too far from him.
"Core energy... core energy...!"
Ever since seeing the stone door, the Masked Man kept muttering those words that sounded obscure and difficult to understand.
The stone door was very large, capable of allowing dozens of people to pass through simultaneously.
The edges of the door frame and even the top were all in their original, uncarved, massive stone form, with rough surfaces, even more so than the bricks in the ruin passageways and rooms.
Based solely on appearance, it gave a strong sense of thickness, making it difficult to judge the door's specific depth.
Moreover, dozens of similarly rough grooves were carved onto the door's surface, intersecting like a spiderweb.
The faint glow of energy crystals flowed within these dozens of grooves, like fireflies flickering in the night.
The Masked Man stood before the stone door, continuously repeating that phrase, yet made no move to push the door open. Instead, he... raised both hands.
Just like that, using his long, pointed nails, he plunged them deep into the stone door.
The seemingly hard stone door yielded like tofu, easily pierced by the Masked Man's nails.
Click-clack...
Instead of pushing the door, the Masked Man began to dig.
The speed of his swinging hands gradually increased, and the number of stone fragments on the ground in front of the door also grew rapidly.
In just a short while, the Masked Man had dug a large hole through the stone door.
Perhaps because he was getting deeper, the Masked Man seemed to grow more excited, his inserted hands applying even more force!
And so, he dug through the stone door.
The unique glow of energy crystals spilled out from the hole he had dug, illuminating his smooth, featureless white mask.
"Core energy..."
The Masked Man suddenly thrust his upper body into the hole, stretched his hands straight forward, then pried them apart to the left and right, and violently pulled back, forcibly expanding the hole's size.
Subsequently, he slipped into the room on the other side of the stone door, landing nimbly and standing upright steadily.
The three swallowtail butterflies followed closely, fluttering around the Masked Man.
This was also a room covering a large area, filled with the gentle glow of energy crystals.
However, this was not a safe zone. There were no suspended crystals, nor crystal spikes resembling sea urchin spines, either embedded in the walls or hanging in the air.
The source of the crystal light was… a stone platform located at the room's center.
To be precise, the light source was the helical crystal on the stone platform, shaped like the DNA double helix, spiraling upward to over three meters high.
And on top of the crystal, a naked, white-haired human lay on their back, arms and legs hanging naturally downward, with their back connected to the crystal.
On the ground below the stone platform, over a hundred crystal strands as thick as fingers extended like a spiderweb to the bases of the surrounding walls, seemingly penetrating them, heading to unknown places.
From the moment the Masked Man entered the room, his gaze was fixed on the white-haired human atop the spiral crystal.
"Ha, haha, hahahaha!"
He suddenly emitted intermittent laughter that was completely human.
From the sound, one could easily hear his excitement, ecstasy, and other emotions.
So, was he human?
Was the being atop the crystal also human?
The swallowtail butterflies fluttering beside the Masked Man suddenly transformed into a mass of Nen energy, imprinting onto his mask, becoming three vivid swallowtail butterfly patterns.
Immediately after, the Masked Man pushed off with his feet, arriving beside the stone platform at his fastest speed.
Without the slightest hesitation, he extended his right hand, grasped one strand of the spiral crystal, and then abruptly exerted force, lifting the entire stone platform.
Crack… snap-
As the Masked Man lifted the stone platform, the over a hundred crystal strands extending from its base suddenly snapped, making sounds like shattering glass.
And the white-haired human suspended atop the spiral crystal remained motionless, as if glued there with strong adhesive.
Simultaneously, nearly a hundred safe zones within the underground ruins suddenly lost their light.
If this place were a game map, then within a single breath, nearly a hundred illuminated areas on the map suddenly went dark.
The crystals in the safe zones lost their glow, and so did the production lines for the copper mechanical lifeforms.
At the same time, they lost their function as safe zones.
Both Beyond's team and the Hunter Association's team used the safe zones as temporary operational bases.
They were inside the safe zones when the crystals suspended in the air suddenly dimmed, as if a power outage occurred, plunging the rooms into darkness.
At that moment, what everyone thought was not why the crystals lost their light, but whether this safe zone still had the effect of keeping the copper mechanical lifeforms out.
Beyond's team side.
Originally, Pekotero and Usamen, who had returned to the safe zone, were reporting about the Mascher incident.
He was the first casualty their team had suffered since arriving in the Dark Continent. Combined with the inexplicable scene at the site, Beyond took it very seriously.
Just as they were discussing the matter, the entire room suddenly plunged into darkness.
But the next second, Golem casually conjured a searchlight, tossing it around, instantly illuminating the entire room.
Beyond looked up at the crystals suspended in the air, an interested expression appearing on his face.
"This situation isn't good," Pariston said, narrowing his eyes.
"How so?" someone asked.
"Normally, this place should no longer be safe."
Pariston's gaze shifted from the crystals to the entrances around them.
After watching for a moment, it shifted to Pekotero, reminding him, "As soon as you hear any movement, warn us immediately."
"Understood!"
Pekotero nodded with a grave expression.
On the other side, the Hunter Association also used Nen methods to create light sources to illuminate the room.
Their judgment was the same as Beyond's side: they believed the crystals losing their light meant the safe zones had failed. In other words, copper mechanical lifeforms should be able to enter the safe zones now.
Above ground, unseen by both parties, a violent, super-scale riot was triggered.
The few visible entrance structures on the ruins were all smashed by the copper mechanical lifeforms.
They... in a frenzied manner, swarmed into the underground ruins from all directions through the ruin entrances.
The moment the riot occurred was precisely when the Masked Man removed the stone platform.
Simultaneously, Law's group arrived at the entrance to the second underground level.