"The time it takes for objects to become spiralized seems to be getting shorter and shorter." Ronin looked at the pencil in his hand. It was something he had deliberately placed inside the ruins a day ago.
But now that he had taken it back out, it had already completely twisted into a spiral shape.
"The plants on the ground are getting brighter too," Kurapika said, pointing out another fact.
The meaning behind his words was obvious. He believed the key source of the spiralization was the blue spiral-shaped plants that filled every corner of the ruins' depths.
The light emitted by those plants illuminated the entire deep area of the ruins, and also brought unexpected changes to the site.
"That layer of energy that once covered the spiral plants and lit up the ruins is just like the Ten used by Nen users," Ronin said, agreeing with Kurapika's conclusion.
Even now, though, he still found it hard to believe.
How could plants have Ten?
Especially when those spiral plants were genuinely weak. Even an ordinary person could pluck one and crush it to death with ease.
And yet, those very things were displaying signs of Ten.
What's more, their Ten was growing stronger as more people entered the depths of the ruins. It felt as if the blue spiral plants carpeting the ground were absorbing the life energy of every living creature that stepped into their territory.
But the problem was, Ronin's shadow clones had not sent back any feedback suggesting their life energy had been drained.
So how were these plants growing stronger?
It couldn't be that causing various objects to spiralize was the reason they were strengthening, right?
Ronin hadn't detected Nen in any of the things that had undergone spiralization. Energy couldn't appear out of thin air. There had to be something they were overlooking.
Aside from the spiralization phenomenon, some people had also found various stone tablets inside the blood-soaked section of the ruins, recording sacrificial rites and related events.
Ronin was only interested in the writing on the tablets. After paying some money as compensation, he easily obtained permission to photograph the inscriptions for research.
Although the writing was similar to the prayer script of the Kurta Clan, there were still some differences.
With Ronin's level of scholarship, there was no way he could read it himself. So the simplest method was to log onto the Hunter website and post a translation request.
He didn't even need to leave the ruins before he quickly obtained the translated contents.
However, during that process, Ronin also realized something.
Exploring, developing, and researching ruins was truly an extremely expensive endeavor. If the goal was simply to take things from the ruins and sell them, then yes, one could make a profit. But if one was driven by a desire to explore ancient history, then they either needed knowledge or money.
Ronin wasn't going to master the necessary knowledge in the short term, but he was willing to learn.
Exploring ruins was not something that could be completed in just a day or two. Not to mention, every few days, a wave of monsters would surge out from the central passage and attack everyone who had entered the ruins.
It felt as if the central passage was a monster spawn point.
If it couldn't be destroyed, then no matter how the army and the explorers wiped out the monsters that emerged, more would keep pouring out after some time passed.
In the right-side passage, Ronin met someone from the Hunter Association.
The man's name was Benkt.
Benkt's purpose in coming here was simple: he wanted to unite the people inside the ruins and clear out the monsters in the central passage.
Ideally, they would push deep inside, find out why there were so many monsters, and solve the problem at its source.
Only then could everyone continue exploring the ruins in peace, instead of having to nervously face monster attacks every so often.
Ronin had no objection to that.
After he took control of the right-side passage, most of the monsters that rushed into it during each outbreak had been cleaned up by him.
Although the number of monsters that managed to enter the right-side passage each time wasn't especially large, dealing with them over and over still wasted a lot of energy.
What's more, Ronin had also noticed that as their exploration time inside the ruins increased, the number of monsters seemed to be increasing as well.
If left alone, the central passage might soon become a massive hidden danger.
Mashur was also currently with Ronin, and he more or less represented Myuhael's position.
The reason Mashur had come this time was also to talk to Ronin about the problem in the central passage.
The spiders in the underground city had already been wiped out, but during the cleanup, everyone had discovered that there really was a passage in the cavern ceiling of the underground city that connected to the central passage.
Recently, the number of monsters pouring out from the central passage had increased, and Myuhael suspected it was caused by the reduction in the spider population.
Before they entered the underground city, the spiders and the monsters in the nest had maintained a delicate balance.
But after the spiders began rampaging for some unknown reason, that balance was broken by the outsiders, who slaughtered the spiders.
Even so, one problem still remained: the monsters in the nest were reproducing far too quickly.
Experts from V5 proposed one possibility—that the monster structure inside the central nest might be similar to an anthill or a beehive, with a mother body continuously giving birth to offspring.
So as long as they could find the mother body and kill it, they could suppress the monsters' reproduction, or even cut it off completely.
After that, they would only need to kill the remaining living monsters, and exploring the ruins would no longer carry the risk of monster attacks.
Ronin chose to accept Benkt's invitation.
He understood the simple principle that there was strength in numbers.
The agreed time was two days later, because based on their calculations, the next monster tide should arrive tomorrow.
Once that wave of monsters was dealt with, it would be the best time to invade the central area.
As for the exploration of the Kurta ruins, Ronin no longer needed to keep watching everything through shadow clones.
After all, if the explorers really wanted to hide some important artifact, even if he kept monitoring them, it would still be difficult to see through every trick.
Leaving aside the strange and varied abilities of Nen users, even a few small distractions would be enough for those experienced people to hide whatever they had unearthed.
Under normal circumstances, Ronin couldn't exactly kill people over it either.
So rather than monitor them, it was better to tempt them with benefits and encourage them to bring out whatever they found.
If it was valuable, he would buy it. If it wasn't, they could still part on good terms.
With this approach, Ronin and the others ended up looking more like merchants stationed at the entrance of the ruins. But it also improved the explorers' opinion of them quite a bit.
Ronin's earlier domineering behavior had made many people wary and suspicious of him.
His previous act of paying to purchase the text on the stone tablets also eased the relationship between both sides considerably.
But once the inscriptions on those tablets were translated, both Ronin and Kurapika couldn't help frowning.