A small flame shot from Ronin's mouth after he finished forming the hand seals, plunging straight underground.
At that moment, behind him, Vanessa's figure slowly emerged—the same Vanessa who had gone down below earlier.
Looking at Ronin in front of her, Vanessa had only one thing she wanted to ask:
"You call this infiltration?"
Ronin's real body appeared behind Vanessa.
"Yeah. I noticed something unusual, so my methods changed a little. Just watch."
As he spoke, the tiny fireball had already passed through the still-burning monster corpses and landed somewhere deep in the lower-level space.
Then the fireball hit the ground, and an even more violent blaze erupted from within it.
In a single instant, it swept through every part of the lower level that Ronin could see.
When the flames spread toward the stairs, an earthen wall rose from the staircase, blocking the fire outside.
But before the fire was stopped, Ronin's Sharingan saw that every monster touched by the flames had caught fire.
His guess might have been right.
With her line of sight blocked, Vanessa looked at Ronin in confusion, not knowing what exactly he had discovered.
"Let's leave for now. We'll come back later. By then, I think the bodies down below should have burned out," Ronin said, turning and walking back the way they had come, without any intention of explaining.
That only made Vanessa even more confused.
However, before they left the building, Ronin's shadow clone carried out the corpse of a raptor-like monster and followed them outside.
Muherr and the others were puzzled when they saw the two of them come out so quickly.
That timing didn't look like they had deeply explored the lower level at all.
Could the lower level be very small?
And what did it mean that Ronin's clone had come out carrying a monster corpse?
The shadow clone heavily threw the monster's body in front of everyone.
"Vanessa and I didn't go too deep. Before entering the lower level, I accidentally discovered something, so I interrupted this exploration," Ronin said.
Meanwhile, the shadow clone had already finished forming hand seals. Without giving Muherr and the others a chance to ask questions, it spat a Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique directly onto the monster's corpse.
The great fireball quickly dispersed, but the monster corpse on the ground began burning fiercely.
Seeing this, even Vanessa, who had come out with Ronin, noticed something was wrong.
"Isn't this corpse burning a little too easily?" Mashour voiced everyone's doubt.
"Exactly." Ronin nodded.
He had discovered it when his shadow clone used Fire Dragon Flame Bullet to attack the monsters. These monsters really burned too easily.
Especially the first monster that had rushed to a stop not far from him. After collapsing to the ground, its body, scorched by the high-temperature flames, didn't look like a normal human corpse. Instead, it resembled ignited charcoal.
Ronin's shadow clone had even deliberately removed its gas mask and smelled it. The scent wasn't the charred stench produced by burning human flesh, but rather an irritating odor like incompletely burned plant matter.
Ronin had also noticed that Fire Release ninjutsu was exceptionally effective against these monsters.
Once these monsters caught fire, it seemed like the flames wouldn't go out easily. It felt more like he had lit one torch after another.
That was why Ronin had chosen to release the wider-range Searing Migraine. After that, all he had to do was wait.
But if they really went underground now, after trapping all that heat below, the temperature there definitely wouldn't be something humans could endure.
Ronin explained his thoughts to the group.
Looking at the burning corpse, everyone believed what he said, though they still found it deeply surprising.
"If all of these monsters share traits with plants, then their survival conditions really are an unknown," Muherr said. He had already begun considering whether they should leave the ruins and notify experts from the Hunter Association.
A major discovery like this, for a Hunter, might be enough to promote a professional Hunter to a One-Star Hunter.
"We'll finish exploring first. Once information about these monsters leaks, V5 and the Association may seal this place off. If that happens, investigating anything else will become difficult," Muherr decided after a brief moment of thought.
Next came patient waiting.
One hour later, Ronin brought the group back to the underground entrance.
When the stone slab was opened, a wave of heat rushed up from below.
"With this temperature, entering for now is out of the question," Muherr said helplessly.
"I do have a way to cool it down quickly," Ronin said.
The method was simple: directly use Water Release to flood the lower level. Water had a high specific heat capacity, so it could carry away a large amount of heat from below.
Of course, it would also impact the conditions on the lower level to some extent, but that probably didn't matter anymore. After all, whatever could be damaged had already been damaged by the earlier Fire Release.
Everyone was amazed that Ronin could also transform his Nen into a water attribute. Even though many of them had seen his fights in Heaven's Arena, they were still surprised.
A large amount of water sprayed from Ronin's mouth and surged into the lower-level space.
The intense heat was quickly carried away by the flood. Although the underground temperature didn't drop to a comfortable level, it was at least enough for the team to enter and explore.
Also, after discovering the monsters' weakness, Golem's weapon changed as well.
It went from a Gatling gun to a flamethrower.
Ronin returned to the middle of the formation, while Golem took the lead and entered the underground level first.
The high-powered flashlights came into play, illuminating everything below clearly.
The floodwater had not only carried away the heat, but had also pushed the charred monster corpses deeper into the space. As far as the eye could see, there wasn't a single living monster left. Instead, deep within the area, there was another passage leading downward.
Following that passage, they arrived before a metal gate.
The gate was engraved with images of people in long robes, kneeling devoutly before a plant that looked somewhat like a banyan tree.
Hanging from that plant were round fruits.
At the places where the fruits had split open, juvenile versions of the monsters Ronin and the others had seen were crawling out.
Everyone stared at the mural on the iron gate, looking at one another in disbelief.
They hadn't expected Ronin's guess to actually be right.
The monsters living inside the building really were all related to plants.
In fact, they had been born from a plant.
But Ronin's attention was focused on one corner of the mural.
There, all kinds of bottles and jars were depicted. Someone was handling those objects, as if conducting various experiments.
Something else from the Dark Continent surfaced in Ronin's mind.
The Alchemical Plant, Brion.
Could the plant carved on this iron gate—the one capable of giving birth to monsters—be an alchemical creation from the Dark Continent?
Then another thought arose in Ronin's mind.
Could that kind of plant be behind this door?
~~~
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