To Ronin, an Enhancer-versus-Enhancer fight was nothing more than a comparison of raw stats.
When one side completely overwhelmed the other in sheer numbers, technique didn't matter at all.
If your body was tougher, your burst of active aura was stronger, and your total latent aura was greater, then you were simply stronger and had better endurance.
His opponent's choice hadn't exactly been wrong, but he had overlooked the single most fatal factor of all:
Ronin's aura completely crushed his.
That was why, the moment Ronin judged that the other man was most likely an Enhancer, he had shown up right in front of him without the slightest hesitation.
There was no need to hold back.
As the man dropped to one knee from the pain, Ronin raised his leg and kicked him straight in the chest, caving in his entire ribcage before casually tossing him aside.
It sounded like a long sequence when described, but in reality, all of it happened in an instant.
When the massive shield flew past the scalp of another man in black who had been about to attack Abaki, the atmosphere in the theater froze.
Only the heavy thud of the giant shield stabbing into the floor echoed through the hall.
At that moment, Abaki opened her eyes.
With a slight flick of her wrist, the fishhook that had vanished into space reappeared in midair in a ring of rippling distortions—
and hanging from that hook was a rocket launcher.
Yes, an actual shoulder-fired rocket launcher.
No one knew where Abaki had reeled that thing in from, but as soon as she yanked it back with the line, she raised it and aimed directly at the theater doors.
Abaki had been completely focused on "fishing" just now, so she had no idea what was happening in the theater.
Norman, however, did.
After all, that shield hadn't just flown over the head of the man in black—it had also passed right in front of him.
Still, judging from the newcomer's actions, he was most likely a friend rather than an enemy.
So had the situation changed?
If they coordinated with him, was there a chance to get everyone out of the theater alive?
The rocket shot out.
The guards at the doors had never imagined something like this would happen. By the time they tried to dodge, it was already too late.
The explosion blasted some of them away, and it also destroyed the sealed doors, revealing the open corridor beyond—and several audience members who hadn't fully left yet.
That sudden turn of events left those lingering spectators frozen in shock.
Then came the screams.
But inside the theater, Abaki had already shouted at the top of her lungs, "Run!"
This was her trump card.
The Freak Show Troupe had paid far too much to make it this far. Too many people had set their eyes on the so-called freaks who struggled to survive on the road.
Some were driven by morbid curiosity. Others had darker motives.
The Freak Show Troupe had been through too much to get here.
Everyone had kept something hidden up their sleeve.
Abaki was no exception.
The shattered doorway might not be enough to get everyone out safely, but as long as their leader Norman could escape, then the Freak Show Troupe would not disappear here.
But in the very next second, gunfire rang out from the corridor outside the broken doors.
Audience members who hadn't yet left fell one after another with screams.
A large group of armed men in black suits, like gangsters, appeared in the hallway and opened indiscriminate fire on everyone there.
That situation did not last long.
Because soon, two more figures appeared in the corridor.
The gunmen in black started dropping one after another, all brought down by those two swift figures.
Those two were Neon and Shizuku.
The moment Ronin saw the black-suited gunmen appear in the corridor, something clicked in his mind.
He raised his hands into the cross-shaped seal for a Shadow Clone.
In the next instant, the shadow clone remained in the theater, while the real Ronin shot out toward the corridor at top speed.
If Ryan wasn't in the theater, then he had to be hiding outside it.
Everyone in the theater watched Ronin split into two and couldn't help being stunned.
An ability that could create such realistic clones had to belong to the Conjuration category—
but for a Conjurer to overpower an Enhancer head-on, there could only be one explanation:
his level was unfathomable.
Still, the men in black didn't panic.
They immediately changed tactics.
The "Ryan" whose body had started spreading that corrosive trace after being struck by the fishhook suddenly shattered apart.
The corrosive marks in the air quickly faded as well.
He had canceled the pursuit of Abaki.
At the same time, the men in black stepped forward and charged straight at Ronin's clone.
But in Ronin's eyes, their movements were full of openings.
Because only one of them was a true Nen user.
The rest were just ordinary people.
Even though the Nen user had clearly prepared something on them in advance, making them move in a way that looked almost indistinguishable from real Nen users, the key issue wasn't with those people—
it was with the actual Nen user himself.
The Sharingan's powerful perception made the difference between a true Nen user and the disguised ones glaringly obvious.
Simply put, a real Nen user's aura was alive.
The aura on the disguised ones, by contrast, was stiff and dead.
To ordinary people, that difference might seem minor.
But to Ronin, it was the difference between a firefly and the moon.
So his answer was simple:
explode forward with speed and strike the real one directly.
From Abaki's earlier clash with him, it was already clear that the man's ability activated as long as it made contact with the target's aura.
But that had happened because Abaki's attack landed on a decoy target that had been prepared in advance.
So what if the attack landed on the real body instead?
That was where the advantage of the Shadow Clone came in.
Even if striking the man's true body really triggered his Nen ability, that ability would still need to go through the same corrosive pursuit process it had used when chasing Abaki before it could affect the original.
But the real Ronin had already left the theater.
Who knew how long that corrosive effect would take to catch up with him now?
Among the men in black closing in on the clone, the only true Nen user cursed inwardly the instant Ronin's clone vanished from sight.
His real objective had never been to kill Ronin's clone.
What he wanted was to use the mysterious nature of his ability to pin the clone down and create an opening for his allies to attack the real body.
Besides, Ronin himself had never been the target of this operation in the first place.
But the sudden burst of speed from Ronin's clone had caught him completely off guard.
Even though he had already judged from Ronin's earlier actions that Ronin was extremely powerful, the situation still made him uneasy.
The men in black all reacted almost identically the moment Ronin's clone vanished—
they stopped moving and guarded cautiously.
But no matter how cleverly the Nen user tried to blend in, he had been exposed from the very beginning.
So when Ronin's clone reappeared, his fist was already driving straight into the man's body.
There was no time to react at all.
This was a crushing kill brought about by an overwhelming gap in strength.
Cherry Blossom Impact tore through the man's body.
At that moment, Ronin's shadow clone carried no Nen at all—
only chakra converted from Nen.
~~~
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