Muherr had been fairly well prepared. However, after entering the room, Ronin still failed to find any useful information.
The entire room looked extremely simple. There were some traces of daily life, and it was clear that those traces were already quite old, though they had not reached the thousand-year scale of the lower city.
Overall, it matched the condition of this whole area.
The feeling it gave was as if a member of the Kurta Clan had accidentally wandered into this place and then settled here for a long time.
After all, in the other rooms, they had not found any traces of Kurta Clan members living there, much less any of their distinctive clothing.
If things really were as Ronin guessed, and these were just relics left behind by a Kurta ancestor who had stumbled in by accident, then this exploration could basically end here.
That left Ronin feeling somewhat disappointed.
"Maybe we'll find something new if we go deeper?" Vanessa naturally saw what Ronin was thinking and tried to comfort him.
When they had first met, Vanessa had still been rather reserved and unnatural, but after exploring together underground, the two of them had become much more familiar with each other.
"That's all we can hope for," Ronin said. Of course, he understood that too.
In any case, he still had plenty of time, so he didn't mind staying here a while longer.
Besides, he hadn't truly expected to uncover everything the moment he arrived. Whether that clothing had really been left behind by someone from the Kurta Clan was still a question in itself.
"You two can withdraw first. The captain probably needs more manpower right now anyway," Vanessa said to the mercenaries on guard. When facing members of her own squad, she showed none of her earlier shyness.
The two guards nodded without saying much and quickly headed outside.
Ronin, meanwhile, considered this a favor from Muherr.
"So what are you planning to do now?" Vanessa asked.
Ronin had two choices. One was to actively explore deeper, and the other was to wait for the royal army to intervene and continue the excavation.
Vanessa personally leaned more toward Ronin choosing the first option.
The reason she thought that way was because, while moving together with Ronin, she had already seen his ability to alter terrain.
If he used that ability to explore downward, he should be able to quickly open up the buried areas and enter deeper places.
Ronin did not disappoint Vanessa.
If he chose the second option, then even if the royal army really dug up something, it might not reach his hands right away. So the best method was indeed to do the digging himself.
With Earth Release ninjutsu, that was not especially difficult for Ronin.
However, there were still some things he needed to clarify first.
"If I continue exploring downward now, Muherr won't have any objections, right?" Ronin asked.
If he really discovered something valuable in the lower levels, Ronin, who had Owl as a storage pouch, would not be polite about it.
And once something entered Ronin's pocket, getting him to take it back out would not be easy.
"He won't. I'll be following you anyway," Vanessa said confidently.
Ronin nodded. From the look of her, Vanessa had probably received authorization from Muherr. Since that was the case, Ronin had no reason to be overly polite.
The two left the room and continued deeper into the ruins.
Ronin had previously suspected that Vanessa might have died in the ruins, but judging from the strength of the monsters in the underground city when they left, those monsters probably weren't enough to threaten her life.
Perhaps his judgment had been wrong.
But that was normal too. Vanessa had her own thoughts, after all. If she had found things unsuitable and chosen to leave the mercenary corps, that would make sense as well.
Besides, it was possible that the manga simply had not drawn every member of the mercenary group.
As those thoughts passed through his mind, Ronin and Vanessa moved at a decent pace. However, the deeper they went, the more people appeared nearby.
It seemed there were quite a few people who wanted to dig through the passage and be the first to get a taste of what lay beyond.
Ronin and Vanessa were directly blocked outside. At the clogged area ahead, people had already begun excavating.
From the look of it, this place had suffered a geological collapse, burying the original rooms and corridors. As long as they could dig through here, they should be able to enter deeper areas—and those areas should be completely unexplored.
As the saying went, wealth moved people's hearts. As long as they could keep others outside, the ones who entered first would naturally hold the advantage.
However, the people blocking the way made their words sound very pleasant.
According to them, only by opening the passage could more people enter the ruins. Otherwise, everyone would be stuck outside.
Ronin did have a way to enter without alerting anyone: use Earth Release to sink underground, then pass through from below.
But if he did that, Vanessa would be left behind.
As for helping everyone open the passage, he had no such intention. In fact, in his view, the collapse was blocking people at exactly the right spot.
"I can go around and enter first. What about you?" Ronin asked quietly.
Vanessa shook her head. "No. Even if I move through the shadow of a pebble, I can't see a path connected to the inside."
"Then what if you enter my shadow directly?" Ronin thought of another method.
"How are you planning to do that? There has to be light for your shadow to be large enough for me to hide in," Vanessa said, essentially telling Ronin the activation conditions of her ability directly.
Keeping a shadow large enough underground really did make things difficult for Ronin.
In fact, Ronin wasn't even sure whether using Earth Release would actually let him bypass the blockage, or whether he would simply dig straight through the ground.
So his answer was, "I'll try slipping underground first. If that doesn't work, then we'll have no choice but to force our way through."
Vanessa nodded.
Before coming here, she had not expected this place to be so troublesome.
Ronin was not surprised by Vanessa's behavior at all. This was classic Emitter behavior—careless and broad-strokes, even more so than Enhancers.
The underground infiltration ninjutsu Ronin was most familiar with was the Headhunter Technique.
Once he finished forming the hand seals, his figure quickly vanished. But in the very next second, he burst rapidly back out of the earth.
"No good." After emerging from the ground, he shook his head.
Vanessa looked at the place he had come out from and saw the hard layer of rock beneath the soil.
"Come with me," Ronin said decisively.
Once he realized that Earth Release would only make him slam into solid rock, he immediately came up with another plan.
At the same time, he was also wondering inwardly: could the underground city be directly beneath this hard rock layer?
If that was really the case, then the moment they dug through the rock, they might immediately run into countless spiders.
The commotion from Ronin and Vanessa also alerted quite a few people.
When they saw Ronin emerge from underground, some couldn't help revealing mocking smiles.
But when they saw Ronin and Vanessa ignoring the blockers and walking forward, some people frowned, while others began watching with gloating anticipation.