Ronin twitched his nose slightly. There was a faint smell of blood in the villa—someone had tried to mask it with incense, but it couldn't be fully covered.
A blood stench that stubborn meant only two things:
Either a bloody incident had just happened here—
or bloody incidents happened here often, and something had bled not long before they arrived.
Ronin's instincts leaned toward the second.
The villa was eerily quiet. There wasn't even a single attendant in sight. The butler led them into a spacious banquet hall.
The room held all kinds of strange art pieces—twisted human expressions frozen into sculptures—and a long dining table.
At the head seat sat an old man.
He carried a noble, aristocratic air, but his face was unnaturally pale. With his long silver hair, the man gave off a chilling, shadowy presence.
When Ronin and the others entered, those sharp eyes swept across them with open aggression.
It felt like an old count looking down on unruly peasants in his domain.
There was none of the "honored guest" tone the butler had claimed.
Especially with the long table completely empty, it was obvious this wasn't hospitality at all.
"Outsider—killing Spence made you feel proud, did it?" Ryan spoke from above, confident. He'd expected to need some tricks to lure these outsiders into his territory, but things had been unexpectedly easy.
Maybe Spence's incompetence had made them underestimate the elders' true strength.
Ryan certainly didn't consider himself a fool like Spence.
"Is your trump card the people hidden outside this hall?" Ronin's eyes swept the surroundings.
Within his En, he could sense people appearing outside the banquet hall from the moment they stepped inside.
Every one of them was wrapped in dense aura.
And the number had already climbed past twenty.
That was terrifying. But as he focused, Ronin noticed something else:
Their aura signatures felt oddly similar—
and all of them pointed toward Ryan at the head seat.
There were a few possibilities.
First: Ryan was a Manipulator and had taken control of a large number of Nen users.
Second: Ryan and those people were allies using a coordinated "combo" Nen ability—team-based Nen that could combine into something bigger.
Third: all those people were actually Ryan's clones—meant to look scary, but not truly dangerous.
The first was the most common type.
The first person Ronin thought of was Illumi—who could control others through needles and similar tools.
If the controlled people were Nen users themselves, their aura would naturally show both their own aura and traces of the controller's.
That said, this "two-aura" tell didn't neatly apply here, because Ronin had clearly sensed two different aura signatures on the target earlier.
The second possibility was the most dangerous.
Combo Nen often produced ridiculous effects.
The example burned into Ronin's memory was Kakin's Ninth Prince—whose combined Nen could even trigger soul-swapping after an attack landed.
If Ryan had something like that…
Ronin's hand had already prepared, in secret, to form seals and yank Kurapika, Neon, and Shizuku away with a teleport if necessary.
As for the third possibility, Ronin didn't even seriously consider it. If those were all clones, then Ryan wasn't worth fearing.
Ryan answered soon enough.
Metal shutters slammed down around the banquet hall—like the ones Ryan had used earlier to trap and slaughter the reinforcements other elders had sent him.
At the same time, sedative smoke began to billow into the room.
The butler beside them shifted instantly, sliding sideways as if to create distance from Ronin and the others.
But the moment he moved, a chain wrapped around him.
Kurapika had struck.
And the instant the butler was bound, Blinky appeared in Shizuku's hands. She spoke calmly:
"Suck up all the poison gas in the room."
She flipped the switch.
A powerful suction erupted from Blinky's mouth. The sedative smoke barely drifted near before it was swallowed in like it was rushing to its own execution.
In the blink of an eye, the air cleared.
Ryan, already wearing a gas mask, didn't look surprised.
Because the gas wasn't the real killing method.
The gas's main purpose was thinning numbers. If it couldn't thin them, it still forced them to reveal abilities and burn stamina.
That was still useful.
Besides, two of them already had masks on anyway—even if the gas hadn't been cleared, those two would have been fine.
Ronin's eyes moved from Ryan to the door they'd entered through, because his En sensed more and more people gathering there.
And right then, the iron plating at the door lifted upward, revealing the only exit out of the hall.
Ronin merely glanced at it, then looked back to Ryan.
"Is that all?"
He murmured softly.
But his body vanished.
He didn't need Lightning Release Body Flicker—at his current level, even a pure Enhancer burst of speed was terrifyingly fast.
Ryan's pupils tightened the moment Ronin disappeared.
He ripped off his mask, mouth swelling as he spat a spray of blood toward the spot where Ronin reappeared.
And horrifyingly, the blood changed in midair—each droplet swelling into a fist-sized, tumor-like blob.
A disgusting, unnatural attack.
Ronin simply gathered chakra, formed seals, and blasted a stream of fire straight into it.
Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu.
The scorching heat swallowed the blood tumors, and the flames—carrying the ones not instantly charred—washed toward Ryan himself.
Ryan's expression finally shifted when he saw the fire.
He lunged to the side, avoiding the wave.
But in the instant he dove—
Ronin appeared at his flank, fist already in the posture of the destructive punch, and smashed toward Ryan's body.
Whether in Naruto or here, the Great Fireball was still one of the best feints.
BOOM!
Ronin's punch struck a massive blood vessel.
It burst, spraying blood everywhere.
Ronin retreated in a blur, widening the distance.
Staring at where Ryan had been—
because now, in that spot, there was a massive blood-red thing—
something like a giant slime.