The shadow clone not using Nen was Ronin's final precaution.
He wasn't worried about failing to kill the man. What he was worried about was whether the man's aura might turn into post-mortem Nen after death and cause him trouble.
Even if the odds were extremely small, necessary precautions still had to be taken.
How is this possible?
That was the last thought in the hidden Nen user's mind among the men in black.
Thud.
As the corpse hit the ground and blood spread across the floor, no post-mortem Nen appeared. Only the aura on the nearby men in black gradually dissipated, proving that Ronin had dealt with him with ease.
That was what it looked like when an Enhancer-type fighter got close to a user of another category.
As long as you could grab the opponent's real body and kill them quickly, you didn't need to worry about what kind of troublesome ability their Nen might be hiding.
As for the ordinary men in black, Ronin had no intention of dealing with them.
And he didn't think those people were a match for the performers of the Freak Show Troupe anyway.
These performers seemed to have become battle-hardened through long hardship. Every one of them had solid fighting ability.
At the very least, against ordinary people—even bodyguards—they held the clear advantage.
Especially since some of their unusual physical traits produced unexpected effects in combat.
The fight on this side ended so quickly that the few remaining Nen users still in the theater looked at Ronin's shadow clone differently now.
One direct clash had ended in an instant defeat, proving just how powerful he was. Then an attempted encirclement ended with the hidden ally being killed on the spot.
Those two exchanges alone were enough to show that he was not someone they could afford to provoke.
So the remaining Nen users all made the same choice: they ignored Ronin's shadow clone and retreated at the same time.
Preserving their strength when necessary was also a privilege granted to the Glam Gas family's Nen users.
With the Nen users pulling back, the confused ordinary security personnel became the ones left behind to cover the retreat.
Gunfire became the dominant sound inside the theater.
But once the centaur Norman and Abachi, armed with a rocket launcher, launched their counterattack, the roles of attacker and defender were reversed.
The Freak Show Troupe gained the upper hand, and Ronin's shadow clone no longer even needed to intervene.
The fighting didn't last long.
And with the Nen users retreating, the center of the battlefield began to shift as well.
After all, anyone with eyes could tell by now that the man who had suddenly appeared in the theater was after the one hiding behind the scenes—Ryan Glam Gas.
The retreating Nen users didn't pursue Ronin, nor did they move too far from the theater.
Clearly, they were afraid that their movements might expose Ryan's location.
Outside the theater, the hallway was littered not only with the audience members who had been killed at the start, but also with the bodies of fallen men in black.
Ronin had disappeared, but Shizuku and Neon remained.
They formed a standoff with the Nen users who had safely withdrawn from the theater.
When Kurapika had been observing Ryan through the crystal ball, he too had believed Ryan had to be inside the theater.
Because eyes didn't lie.
But after Abachi attacked, Ryan had turned out to be a decoy.
That left several possible explanations.
First: the Ryan watching the troupe's performance had been real, but he was replaced once the show ended.
But Ryan's subsequent lines didn't support that theory.
They were too much like Ryan—too natural to be an act.
Second: something had been done to Ryan in advance, and by the time Abachi attacked, the real Ryan had already left.
But that created another problem: was Abachi's attack capable only of hitting the Ryan she could see, or did it strike the target she had locked onto from the start?
That question hinged on the fact that Abachi's attack had spatial properties.
In other words, once Abachi locked onto Ryan, then no matter where he teleported, her attack should have tracked him down.
But what was hit was the fake body, while the real Ryan vanished without a trace.
That left a third possibility.
The transfer ability belonged to Ryan himself.
But before he activated it, something had already been set up on his body.
The whole sequence would be: Ryan finished speaking, activated his transfer, left behind a substitute body, the substitute inherited Ryan's current condition, Abachi's attack arrived, and the ability on the fake body triggered, forming those corrosive markings.
In short, Ryan's ability was instant transfer while leaving behind a substitute at the point of transfer.
No—
more accurately, it was probably a reactive Nen ability that triggered the instant he was attacked.
Its effect was likely this: when attacked, it created a fake body to take the hit while the real body transferred away.
And judging by how the substitute triggered the corrosive tracking ability after being hit, the fake body likely inherited some of the states currently affecting the original body.
That meant there were now two crucial questions:
How many times could Ryan's ability be triggered?
And how far could he transfer?
Abilities like this generally had two possibilities. Either the transfer destination was random, or the destination had been fixed in advance.
Kurapika leaned toward the idea that Ryan's transfer location was fixed.
That also fit with why he had the entire theater sealed off. If the destination were random, there was always the possibility he could be sent somewhere dangerous.
The risk would be too high.
And lowering risk would inevitably weaken the effect of the ability.
The transfer distance absolutely couldn't be too far, and it had to be somewhere from which he could still observe what was happening in the theater.
The nearest surveillance room.
Kurapika had already investigated the hotel's layout before they came.
So he headed for the surveillance room immediately.
The moment Ronin came out of the theater, he noticed Kurapika wasn't there, so he instantly used the Telescope Technique.
After quickly locking onto Kurapika's position, Ronin burst forward and vanished from the hallway just as quickly.
Ryan really was in the surveillance room.
His expression was ugly. On the screen was the scene of Ronin's shadow clone suppressing the men in black, turning the tide of battle, and completely ruining his plan.
He didn't know who this unexpected intruder was, but he did know one thing:
the man had come for him.
Ryan stood up from the sofa and strode toward the door.
He couldn't stay here anymore.
The other man was too strong. If he kept lingering and the intruder found this place, then even if he could use his ability to dodge the attack, there was still a chance he'd be caught somewhere in the hotel.
After all, he only had five preset transfer points.
Those five points were five hotel guests staying on the premises. Once his ability was triggered, those guests—whom he had controlled after fulfilling the conditions of his ability—would pay with their lives and become his substitute bodies.
At that moment, there was already a corpse lying in the surveillance room, with a torn wound on its arm.
It perfectly matched the injury the substitute had taken after being struck by Abachi's hook.
At the same time, the corpse had shrunk somewhat—that was caused by blood loss as the corrosive marks spread across it.
But just as Ryan opened the door, he never expected that a chain would silently rise from the ground and whip toward him.
It was Kurapika.