The crimson skeleton reappeared, and the dried-up hand was blocked outside Susanoo.
But only for an instant.
A cracking sound rang out quietly. The shriveled hand kept pushing forward—then abruptly froze in midair.
"Hm?"
A small, withered old man let out a puzzled sound.
This man was none other than the oldest living member of the Zoldyck family: Maha Zoldyck.
Blood seeped faintly from Ronin's left eye. The moment Susanoo shattered, he had activated Ame-no-Tokotachi, locking down the space in front of the man's hand together with the space the hand itself occupied.
Strong.
Far too strong.
The fact that Susanoo had shattered in an instant made Ronin acutely aware of just how terrifying the power behind that attack had been.
Especially because, through his eyes, he could clearly see that all of Maha's aura had been concentrated into that stabbing hand.
In other words, the moment he attacked, he had gone all in with Ko.
Ronin didn't hesitate for even a second. His right eye immediately released Amaterasu at Maha.
But when the black flames appeared, they only scorched empty air.
Maha had already vanished, leaving behind nothing but a severed hand, frozen in place by the locked space.
Too decisive.
It was as if he didn't care at all about losing an arm. The instant he sensed danger, he made the cut without hesitation.
The frozen space returned to normal, and Ronin raised both hands to form seals.
But just then, the shriveled severed hand—which should have fallen the moment the spatial lock disappeared—suddenly erupted with aura and lunged for Ronin's chest.
Residual Nen inside the severed hand had hidden the fact that it could still move.
Ronin understood it instantly, but there wasn't enough time to stop it. The moment he completed the seal, Flying Thunder God activated, and both he and the severed hand clutching at his chest vanished from the arena.
Maha's gaze snapped sideways, then angled down toward a certain spot below.
By then Illumi had already appeared on the ring, right where Ronin had been standing moments before.
He still had needles in hand, but there was no one left to attack.
"Come with me."
Sensing the location of the severed hand, Maha's figure flashed and shot toward the fighters' passage.
The referee on the ring and the audience below had already been completely stunned by what had just happened.
Watching Ronin vanish from the stage like he'd performed some impossible magic, people burst into shocked cries and disbelieving exclamations.
Then, seeing the two men who had appeared out of nowhere flash off the stage as well, many in the crowd immediately began worrying for Ronin.
A lot of them even started loudly cursing the arena management for being useless.
Last time, after beating Uvogin, Ronin had been chased down after the match. Now, after defeating Hisoka, someone had actually attacked him again.
Was this arena full of corpses? Did no one do anything around here?
The organizers felt wronged too, because sitting in the stands were professional Hunters they had hired in advance precisely to prevent anything like this from happening after the match.
Ronin being attacked twice already in Heavens Arena had enraged the upper management, yet even after making preparations this time, they still hadn't been able to stop these brazen people.
The two professional Hunters listened to the crowd's complaints while feeling their phones vibrating in their pockets. Both wore bitter expressions.
No one told them the person they were supposed to protect was this strong.
The level of power Ronin had shown while fighting Hisoka was already way beyond what the two of them could match.
And the assassins who appeared afterward were just as monstrous. They seriously wondered whether chasing after them would amount to walking over and feeding themselves to the enemy.
But their employer was already calling in dissatisfaction, so they could only grit their teeth and give chase.
Ronin's Flying Thunder God marker was on the 188th floor.
That was the room he had once rented before. Even after he left, it had been kept reserved.
The moment he appeared there, he immediately looked down at the severed hand on his chest.
The hand was still clawing at him with all its strength, as if trying to tear through his defense and dig into his body.
Ronin raised a hand, seized the severed arm, and ripped it free with a burst of force.
After all, this was something that hadn't even managed to break through his Ken. In terms of raw strength, there was still a considerable gap between it and him.
That pretty much confirmed it—Maha was most likely an Emitter with Manipulation mixed in, and what he manipulated seemed to be his own body parts.
Ronin flung the severed hand away, and his right eye prepared to cast Amaterasu on it.
But the hand simply vanished in midair, as if it had slipped into another dimension.
That only further confirmed Ronin's judgment. Maha had definitely trained Emission to the point where he could even teleport parts of his own body.
That was also why he had appeared so abruptly earlier, to the point that even Mangekyō Sharingan hadn't caught the trajectory of his arrival.
As for the severed hand escaping, Ronin didn't care much.
The aura in it wasn't particularly strong, but the fastest way to destroy it would still have been Amaterasu.
The problem was that Ronin had already used Susanoo, Amaterasu, and Ame-no-Tokotachi repeatedly in succession, draining a large amount of ocular power.
Using Amaterasu again just to erase one severed hand from Maha wasn't worth risking further damage to his eyes.
If the hand hadn't escaped through that space-shifting ability, he might have tried burning it away with Fire Release or shredding it into pieces with Wind Release.
But now that it was gone, the priority naturally became getting out of there quickly.
Otherwise, Maha would likely use the connection between himself and the severed hand to track this room on the 188th floor.
As for the treatment he had promised Hisoka, Hisoka would probably contact Milia, and Milia would tell him where to go.
Ronin activated Flying Thunder God again and vanished from the room. When he reappeared, he was already outside Heavens Arena.
Less than two minutes after he left, two figures appeared simultaneously inside Room 188.
Waiting for them, however, was Ronin's shadow clone—and in the clone's hands, an already-formed Massive Rasengan.
Boom!
Standing outside the arena, Ronin looked up and could see a violent explosion blooming high above.
That was the terrifying destructive force of the Massive Rasengan.
Ronin didn't know whether the intruders had died in that blast, but he did know that after a warning like that, even if Illumi and Maha teamed up against him again, they would have to think carefully about whether they could truly threaten him.
The Zoldyck family was not invincible.
Choosing someone like him—a man with almost no companions left, whose entire clan had been slaughtered—as an enemy was not exactly a wise move.
When Ronin lowered his head, a car had already pulled up beside him.
He opened the door.
Inside sat Kurapika and the others.
~~~
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