Muherr's next words confirmed that Ronin's guess had been correct.
"Over a hundred years ago, when people began applying electricity to daily life, some discovered that the energy used by ancient technology was likely electricity.
"But that wasn't officially confirmed until 1950, when V5 organized a team to explore the Dark Continent and found a special kind of stone.
"As long as that stone was submerged in water, it could produce a huge amount of electricity. After that information was sent back, people compared it with existing records and discovered that ancient ruins had once contained descriptions of that same stone.
"But after all these years, no one has found another stone of that kind—the one named the Unmanned Rock. It's as if, over the past thousand years, those special stones already finished discharging and reverted to ordinary stones."
Muherr looked at the surprise in Ronin's eyes behind the mask and seemed rather satisfied.
Ronin, however, was calculating things in his mind.
Based on what he knew, humanity discovered electricity and confirmed its practical use around the year 1800.
That was also when V5 signed a treaty.
Ronin knew that from the manga. The treaty wasn't aimed at forbidden zones or ruins, but at the Dark Continent.
In other words, starting in 1800, V5 banned everyone from exploring the Dark Continent.
That same year, the Kurta Clan chose to live in seclusion, because hunters targeting the Kurta Clan's Scarlet Eyes had already appeared back then.
During that period, V5 also restricted access to ruins and mysterious regions across the world—or more accurately, within the range of Lake Mobius—designating all of them as forbidden zones. Ordinary people found it almost impossible to obtain permission to explore them.
Professional Hunters, however, had the right to apply to explore more than seventy percent of the world's forbidden zones.
The following hundred-plus years also became a period of rapid technological advancement for humanity.
But during those hundred years, even though V5 had signed the treaty forbidding entry into the Dark Continent, they secretly conducted over a hundred expeditions there.
The Maritime Bureau had records of all of them.
The most recent of those was in 1950, when each of the five great nations sent a team to explore the Dark Continent.
It was also during that expedition that official records finally showed living people returning from the Dark Continent. And it was during that same exploration that five special resources and five calamities were discovered.
Among those five special resources was the Unmanned Rock Muherr had just mentioned.
Once he sorted out the timeline, Ronin more or less understood what Muherr was trying to do by telling him all this.
He was testing him.
Perhaps Ronin's strength had already earned Muherr's recognition, but whether he could become a partner in exploring the Dark Continent together still depended on whether Ronin had ambition—or some other necessary quality.
As Ronin came to that realization, Muherr stopped speaking.
The team had finished resting.
What awaited them next might be a hard fight.
And what they were searching for was a product of the Dark Continent that might still be hidden somewhere in this ancient city.
The building's doors had long since shattered. As Ronin and the others stepped over the broken glass and walked outside, what they felt was a deathly silence—and a chill that made their skin crawl.
The silence came from the city.
The chill came from the feeling that the moment they left the shelter of the building, countless eyes had locked onto them.
They had no city map.
If they wanted to explore, they had to rely on two things: intuition and professional knowledge.
Ronin had intuition.
Professional knowledge, not so much.
But since Muherr dared lead a team into the city, he had naturally made sufficient preparations. Vanessa, who had been following beside Mascher all this time, was his trump card.
Vanessa could roughly determine the general function of a building based on markings on different structures, or even from the shape of the architecture itself.
Then, by mapping everything she saw and analyzing the layout of various buildings, she could identify the key areas they needed to explore.
Monsters would occasionally rush out of the buildings and attack the team, but under Golem's Gatling fire, those monsters posed no real threat.
Even so, Muherr remained on high alert throughout the entire exploration, which made Ronin act even more cautiously.
It seemed that somewhere within this city—dead and silent most of the time—there was still some hidden danger lurking.
Exploration wasn't something that could be completed in a day or two.
The team only had twelve people in total, and they rested and adjusted according to the schedule on their mechanical watches.
Exploring the interiors of the buildings was the most headache-inducing part.
No one knew what kind of food chain existed in this city, but those strange raptor-like monsters always appeared in groups like rats crawling out of the sewers.
"What are these monsters eating?"
The shattered monster corpses gave off a pungent stench of blood, but when they saw them again the next day, they had already dried into empty husks that looked as if they would scatter with a single gust of wind.
No one could answer Ronin's question.
"Should we thoroughly explore the whole building? Especially underground?" Mascher asked Muherr for instructions.
He was also extremely curious about the appearance of these monsters.
Because to him, these creatures felt like they had been copied or cloned.
They had no thoughts, no emotions, and only knew how to mechanically attack any enemy that entered a certain range until either side was dead.
Muherr hesitated.
The main reason was that they had already tried exploring underground before. But the deeper they went, the more monsters appeared.
They had even changed from raptor-type monsters into beasts with sharp claws and hard armor, almost like magical creatures.
Against the raptor monsters, the Gatling guns could tear them apart directly.
But when Golem's aura bullets hit those armored monsters, they couldn't immediately pierce the armor and kill them.
In other words, if they wanted to go deeper underground, Golem would have to abandon modern weaponry and switch to weapons like war hammers or greatswords.
That would raise the team's overall consumption by more than just a small margin.
"What about a solo infiltration?" Ronin suggested.
A supportive Nen construct like Golem was more suited for positional warfare and steady, sweeping suppression.
Exploration should be left to someone more flexible.
Muherr immediately understood what Ronin meant. His gaze fell on Vanessa.
"I can do it," Vanessa said. This time, she didn't hide. Instead, she stepped forward of her own accord.
If they wanted gains, then the underground area was something they had to explore.
"I'll go too," Ronin volunteered.
Muherr hesitated slightly.
He knew Vanessa's ability well. If Ronin went in with her, he might instead become a burden.
He didn't deny Ronin's strength, but after interacting with him, he had also made a rough judgment about Ronin's abilities.
In Muherr's view, what Ronin excelled at was direct confrontation.
If it were a solo assault, Ronin would have no problem at all.
But this was infiltration and exploration…
~~~
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