That kind of insanity was downright terrifying.
Kurapika and the others obviously didn't stay in the car. The three of them got out and naturally formed a triangular formation, instantly ready for combat.
Ronin's gaze, however, locked onto the elder hidden among the crowd.
If he killed that man, the frenzied suicide-bomb assault would end.
The elder's ability wasn't bad. In fact, judging by how it worked in the manga, even if you killed him, his Nen might not vanish—it might become postmortem Nen and remain on the people he'd already marked.
So what?
Ronin even wanted to see what "postmortem Nen" actually looked like.
So his left eye flared—Ame no Tokotachi activated, locking down the space where Theodore stood.
He didn't freeze a huge area. He only froze the space around Theodore's head.
That way, it not only restricted Theodore's movement, it would also make him suffocate over time.
Because inside a frozen space, even air couldn't stir.
Susanoo vanished in a flash. As Ronin completed hand seals, Lightning Release chakra spread across his entire body.
His burst of speed was so extreme that even the explosions couldn't catch him. In a single instant, he slipped past one would-be bomber after another and appeared near Theodore.
Theodore hated outsiders most of all—
especially outsiders who came to take something from Meteor City.
Ronin's appearance had trampled his nerve. So even when Ryan sent someone to tell him to come to Ryan's villa to discuss a plan to kill the outsider, Theodore refused.
He wanted to kill outsiders his own way.
He wanted to make them explode in despair. Only that bloody kind of explosion satisfied him.
But this time, he'd clearly kicked a steel plate.
This kind of "space lock" ability was obviously something a Conjurer—no, an Emitter-type Nen user would have.
And a very powerful one.
On top of that, the protective layer outside Ronin's body had to be some kind of Emission-based Nen beast.
So when Theodore realized he'd been restrained, he had two options.
The first was to try to blow open the locked space with his marks.
That should be doable.
After all, the "lock" was probably created by flooding the area with massive aura, making space itself thick and sticky.
If an explosion shockwave dispersed that density, the lock should break.
But then Theodore saw Ronin cancel Susanoo—and arcs of electricity coil around him.
That was a Transmutation-type ability!
To train two non-adjacent categories to that level… that was a genius.
And lightning modes screamed one thing: speed.
So Theodore decisively abandoned option one.
He was going to give Ronin a "surprise."
Theodore had long since prepared himself to die.
So this time, he would blow up himself—the moment Ronin used a lockdown to pin him and then charged in with lightning to finish him, Theodore would complete his "art": self-detonation.
Theodore's hands—still unfrozen—clapped together.
At the same moment, Ronin appeared right beside him and reached out to touch him.
Behind Theodore's mask, his lips curled into a cold smile. His mouth opened—
"Boom."
But nothing happened.
Instead, Theodore felt his aura draining away at a terrifying speed. In a single instant, he went from a Nen user to an ordinary person.
Sealing Technique: Four Symbols Seal.
A powerful seal that uses the cycle of the four symbols to lock away malicious power.
It was a sealing technique Ronin had started experimenting with on Owl after forcibly controlling him.
And it worked extremely well on Nen: once activated, it could rapidly seal a target's aura, forcing them into Zetsu at high speed.
Of course, because Nen wasn't "evil power" in the strict sense but rather normal life energy, the seal's effectiveness took a discount overall.
But breaking it depended on the sealed person's aura capacity.
With Ronin's Four Symbols Seal, Theodore would be sealed for more than ten seconds—long enough for Ronin to kill him dozens of times.
The instant Ronin finished the seal, he thrust Four-Finger Spearhand straight through Theodore's back and into his heart.
And yet, the postmortem Nen Ronin had been expecting… didn't appear.
When Ame no Tokotachi released, Theodore simply collapsed—unwilling and venomous to the last.
He died in Zetsu. Not a wisp of aura leaked from him.
Let alone postmortem Nen.
Instead, Ronin noticed the Four Symbols Seal on Theodore had become even more solid, showing no sign of being broken by aura at all.
A thought flashed through Ronin's mind.
Maybe Theodore's death really did trigger postmortem Nen—
but at the same time, postmortem Nen counted as "malicious power," triggering the Four Symbols Seal's true suppression effect.
So the process was:
Theodore's normal aura tried to break through the seal… then he died, and that aura instantly transformed into postmortem Nen. The seal, which had been getting battered, instead erupted with its real power and completely suppressed the "evil" postmortem Nen.
If that was true, then if Ronin removed the Four Symbols Seal now, Theodore's Nen ability should erupt again—this time as postmortem Nen.
On the street, the explosions had already stopped.
The marks on Theodore's hands had completely disappeared.
But the fanatical bombers didn't stop just because they couldn't explode anymore. They still threw themselves at Kurapika's group like suicidal maniacs.
Shizuku was the most ruthless of the three.
Kurapika mostly used chains to knock attackers unconscious.
Neon was… casual. She'd tear off whatever body part she'd "picked" as potentially worth collecting.
If anything, the bloodiest fighting was coming from Neon.
Ronin glanced over, told them to be careful, then formed a cross hand sign and used Shadow Clone Jutsu—before quickly retreating.
The shadow clone stepped forward instead and placed a hand on Theodore's corpse.
Chakra flowed in, and the Four Symbols Seal was released—
and in that instant, Ronin saw marks reappear on Theodore's hands, and aura surged out of him.
Only this time, the aura was black.
At the same moment, the other "dead men" who'd had their marks vanish earlier suddenly had marks reappear on them too—just like Theodore.
Ronin's eyes narrowed. Just as I thought.
Then the clone formed hand seals again and slammed a hand down on Theodore's corpse.
But this time, the moment the clone touched Theodore, a negative (-) symbol appeared on the clone's body—
and then the explosion erupted without warning!