Naturally, Ronin and the others headed left. But after entering the passage, they did not immediately reach the discovered building area.
They still had to continue along the tunnel until they reached the entrance at the end—the one the royal army had opened up, leading into the building complex.
The tunnel gradually became much quieter. Aside from occasional voices, other sounds slowly began to appear as well: faint rustling noises coming from deeper inside the passage.
Ronin tried using En, but his perception found nothing unusual.
However, the En he released did detect the presence of quite a few other people. They were probably like him, staying alert and using En as a precaution.
Among them was Muherr, who nodded at him.
Ronin fixed the range of his En at around ten meters. That was a distance he could maintain for a long period of time.
And at that range, if anything unexpected really happened, he would be able to notice it and counterattack immediately.
After a little over ten minutes, the group reached the entrance.
Here, they could already see traces of artificial excavation. If the tunnel continued forward, it was completely blocked by rubble. Judging by the look of it, the collapse had not happened recently.
The team walking ahead of the Rock Mercenary Corps had already equipped their lighting devices and various weapons, then entered through the excavated opening.
Ronin and the others did not make any adjustments here either. After all, everything that needed to be prepared had already been prepared before they entered the ruins.
Mascher took Vanessa and moved to the front of the team. Four Nen users armed with assault rifles followed beside them.
Ronin and Muherr walked in the middle of the group.
Behind them was a tall mecha.
That was Golem—a product created through a Conjuration-type ability, and also something produced through the cooperation of multiple Nen users.
There was a pilot inside Golem, while an Emitter-type Nen user sat on one of its arms.
In addition, four Nen users were assigned around Golem as support. All of them were also carrying assault rifles.
But unlike the four people walking in front, the assault rifles in the hands of the four rear guards were all Conjured items taken from Golem.
And what those assault rifles fired were not ordinary bullets, but Nen from the users.
In other words, aura bullets.
Golem was large, but it was hardly restricted while moving through the tunnel. Only when entering through the opening did it use a little brute force.
Ronin could sense danger from Golem. Cooperative abilities like this could always create certain miracles.
Especially since Ronin knew that the mercenary corps led by Muherr was itself a legendary mercenary group.
After passing through the artificially excavated entrance and continuing forward for about a hundred meters, the scene before them suddenly opened up.
Even though the space here was still relatively dark, everywhere they looked, they saw towering buildings.
Yes.
Towering.
Underground, there were actually countless tall structures rising from the ground, arranged in dense rows.
And the place where Ronin and the others currently stood was the top of one such building. It was just that the building beneath their feet had been constructed against the wall.
Taking a few steps forward to the edge of the building and looking down, they saw darkness as deep as an abyss.
But even the part of the building exposed outside that darkness was over fifty meters high.
Judging by its appearance, it had also been a structure meant for human habitation. Fifty meters was roughly the height of a dozen or so floors.
Ronin casually picked up a piece of rubble from the ground and threw it downward, but after a long while, no echo came back. That only made people even more curious about what was hidden in the darkness below.
"Captain, there are bridges on the buildings leading to other high-rises." Mascher had taken out a pair of binoculars. While looking into the distance, he reported the situation.
Ronin followed the direction Mascher was pointing and indeed saw a bridge swaying in the wind.
It was made of iron chains and wooden planks. He could also see that the team that had arrived before them was already near the bridge, testing whether it could be used to reach another building.
But as Ronin looked around, he realized the numbers seemed wrong.
Not the number of people in their own team, but the number of explorers who had arrived before them. It was different from what he had noticed on the way here.
"Watch out!"
Someone in the group shouted, and gunfire suddenly erupted.
At the same time that voice rang out, Ronin also sensed something unusual.
He abruptly looked up, and the first thing his ears caught was the faint rustling sound he had vaguely heard earlier in the tunnel.
Only now, that rustling had been amplified several times over.
And the things making that sound had also appeared before Ronin's eyes.
Spiders.
Giant spiders descended from above, and Ronin's Sharingan could clearly see the white threads hanging from the backs of their bodies.
The other ends of those threads were attached to the cavern ceiling less than thirty meters above everyone's heads. The ceiling itself wriggled slightly, and pairs of scarlet compound eyes suddenly opened one after another.
"Ah!"
Screams rang out one after another as people were dragged into the air by the spiders.
Blood sprayed high above, mixed with the sticky fluid bursting from spiders whose bodies had been shot through.
"Get inside the building!"
Someone shouted that, and only then did everyone who had come here realize that there were quite a few entrances on the rooftop leading down into the lower floors of the building.
Ronin had no intention of standing out, so he did not use Fire Release ninjutsu to burn the approaching spiders. Instead, he chose the simplest Enhancer-style burst method:
an ordinary uppercut.
Boom!
His fist, already surpassing the power of Uvogin's Big Bang Impact, slammed into the giant spider. It did not blast the spider apart directly. Instead, it sent the creature flying upward, away from Ronin's position.
But Ronin below had already flashed away from where he had been standing.
And the spider that had been sent into the air exploded the instant he moved away.
Severed limbs and juices splattered everywhere, completely covering the spot where Ronin had just been.
"Ronin, here!"
Mascher waved at Ronin from a distance. Beneath his feet were a collapsed section of floor and an exposed room on the level below.
The members of Muherr's squad had already moved closer. Only Ronin, the temporary hire, lacked that shared understanding with them and was a step slower.
Ronin rushed over quickly and leapt down into the lower level.
At that moment, a giant spider lunged after him from behind. But before it could bite down on Ronin, its entire body was sent flying back.
It turned out that the moment Ronin landed, he had already used ninjutsu.
Not Fire Release, but Earth Release.
As he dropped down, his hands touched the ground, and a stone slab immediately rose behind him. The slab knocked the descending spider away and also sealed the opening Mascher had created.
~~~
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