With Miniso as an example, no one else stepped forward to oppose Ronin.
Ronin simply used the Shadow Clone Technique and had the clone leave to notify Myuhael of the situation outside.
As for getting in touch with Kurapika, that would still take some time. At the very least, a shadow clone couldn't enter the game to contact him.
Fortunately, Ronin and Kurapika had already agreed to contact each other once a week.
When Ronin first went to the ruins, he had considered all kinds of possibilities, but he also hadn't wanted to get Kurapika's hopes up too much. That was why he hadn't rushed to tell him about finding clues to another branch of the Kurta Clan.
Now that the ruins needed to be explored in greater detail, Kurapika, as a pure-blooded Kurta, became rather important.
At least, Ronin felt Kurapika was more "purely" Kurta than him, someone who had only inherited memories. Kurapika would probably be able to think of more things.
When Ronin recalled his predecessor's memories, it always felt a bit like looking at flowers through fog.
On the fifth day of exploring the ruins, Ronin got in touch with Kurapika and informed him of the situation there, telling him to organize people and come as soon as possible.
As for clearing the game, that was no longer so important.
Kurapika's voice was trembling. Even if they had truly found living members of the Kurta Clan, they likely had no direct connection to his own branch, but the news still made it difficult for him to quickly calm down.
Ronin could understand that.
During this time, the Association also sent more experts to the site.
At the same time, V5 sent people from the Abnormal Creature Quarantine Bureau, dressed in protective suits, into the underground city.
However, V5's officials had quite a few complaints about Ronin sealing off another area.
But Ronin's approach was simple. Since he couldn't openly fall out with V5, if V5's people wanted to explore the area he was guarding, they could send people to dig their own way in.
If they could actually manage that, Ronin didn't mind there being a few more experts inside the ruins.
The people sent by V5 were already short on manpower. After hearing Ronin's answer, they were dissatisfied, but could only suppress their anger for the time being and lead their team into the underground city to explore.
"Aren't you worried that guy will make trouble for you in the future? V5 officials still have quite a lot of power." Mascher had also come to the ruins.
The giant spiders that had surged out earlier had already been wiped out by the mercenary group and the royal army.
After all, they were just flesh-and-blood monsters without Nen. Under the bombardment of modern weapons, they were little more than living targets.
"He's only an official from the Abnormal Creature Quarantine Bureau. I doubt he has authority over me," Ronin said with a shrug.
V5 had countless departments, and the power of each department was divided by rank.
People from a bureau like that really couldn't be considered part of an important power department. After all, they mainly dealt with unusual species.
Some came from the Dark Continent. Some were dangerous species from the sea. Others were mutated creatures or artificially created monsters.
Mascher nodded, but the look he gave the departing official's back carried a hint of coldness.
The exploration of the ruins never stopped.
Most of the time, though, only Ronin's shadow clones entered the area suspected to have once been inhabited by the Kurta Clan.
Ronin's main body continued exploring the more normal-looking area with Vanessa.
The area full of spiral-shaped objects simply felt too strange.
So for the past few days, the exploration of that region had always been handled by shadow clones. After several days, the clones had already checked every tent in the Kurta living area.
During that process, they found many corpses, as well as several stone tablets engraved with writing.
The words on the tablets were not written in the modern common language, but after just one glance, Ronin recognized the entire passage.
Because to his predecessor, this text had been incredibly familiar.
It was the Kurta Clan's prayer.
The sun in the sky, the green trees upon the earth.
Our bodies are born from the land,
our souls come from the heavens.
The sunlight and moonlight shine upon our limbs,
the green earth nourishes our bodies.
We entrust this body to the wind that blows across the land,
and thank the heavens for granting miracles and the land of the Kurta.
May our hearts remain forever at peace.
May I share joy with all my kin,
and may I share their sorrow.
Please forever praise the people of the Kurta,
and let our scarlet-red eyes bear witness.
But as Ronin looked at the prayer text, he fell into new thoughts.
Namely, where this writing had come from.
He simply began investigating this ancient script. Through paid information on the Hunter website, he learned that this ancient writing had a history of over a thousand years and had been found in ruins across multiple locations.
Ronin began gathering records of this script from other ruins, wanting to know what had been written there.
During that process, he discovered that the inscriptions unearthed at two other ruins contained the same content as the one he had provided.
He marked those two sites down and began focusing on searching for detailed information online. However, even on the professional Hunter website, there was very little information about those two ruins.
But Ronin had a feeling that members of the Kurta Clan had once lived in those ruins as well.
And if that was the case, Ronin became even more confused.
He marked the locations of ruins with traces of Kurta life on a map and realized that, based on what was currently known, including the branch of the Kurta Clan that had been massacred, traces of the Kurta had appeared on four of the six continents.
"Ronin, I found something wrong."
Ronin was still thinking when a graceful figure rushed into the stone house.
It was Vanessa. Her expression looked awful, and she was clutching a dagger in her hand.
Ronin looked at her in confusion. "What happened?"
Vanessa opened her hand and showed him the dagger.
The blade had developed a shocking curve, as if it were trying to coil itself up.
And that condition seemed to match the strange characteristic of everything in this place being spiral-shaped.
Although Ronin had already had this bad feeling in his heart, actually seeing something spiralize right in front of him still shocked him deeply.
"When did you notice this?" Ronin asked gravely as he took the dagger. "Did you bring this in from outside?"
"That's right. It was a gift from Mascher. I already felt something strange about it yesterday, but at the time, I thought I was seeing things. But today I realized it had curled too much." Vanessa's expression was equally solemn.
"We're leaving first." Ronin stood up and immediately walked outside with Vanessa.
If even a dagger could become spiralized, then what about people?
The moment that thought appeared in his mind, the first thing Ronin thought of was the humans in Kurozu Town who twisted themselves into spiral shapes.
But this was the Hunter world, not one of Junji Ito's horror manga worlds.
So the key to this spiralization should still be related to Nen.
But Ronin's shadow clones had not seen any trace of Nen in that area.
In fact, apart from those spiral-shaped plants, there wasn't even any other life there.