Clearing them one by one was too slow.
Now that Ronin treated the Sharingan state as his default, activating jutsu had become second nature.
Especially once he fully retracted his aura and converted it into chakra—thin chakra lines shot out like puppet strings, lashing toward the private soldiers ahead.
Puppet Technique: Human Marionette.
This was the same technique Ronin had used to control Owl, and now it showed just how terrifying it could be.
Gunfire exploded across the manor grounds—but not all of it was aimed at Ronin.
Soldiers who had been hooked by the chakra strings turned and pointed their guns at their own comrades.
A massacre of confusion.
Ronin's fingers danced. Even after his "living puppets" became corpses, they could still fire their weapons.
The private troops went from confident—seeing only two intruders—to total collapse as they watched dead companions continue shooting them, while Ronin and Shizuku advanced toward the manor as if walking through an empty hallway.
Yet no one fled.
Some went berserk and charged forward, ignoring the "shooting corpses," rushing at Ronin and Shizuku.
Others threw down their weapons, fell to their knees, and waited for death.
The first group instantly became new puppets—quickly turning from living puppets into dead puppets.
The second group… Ronin let them go.
He had little interest in killing people who had already lost their will to fight.
But Shizuku chose differently.
So after Ronin and Shizuku passed, nearly a hundred men in the front yard were dead—no survivors.
Yet there were no bodies left behind.
No blood. No guns.
Everything was sucked into Blinky.
As if Blinky contained an infinitely vast storage space capable of holding anything.
Without pausing, Ronin pushed open the villa's front door.
There was no one in sight inside. Either the people had hidden in terror from what happened outside, or they'd already been evacuated.
Ronin hadn't invested much into training En, so his En only covered about twenty meters.
That wasn't enough to cover the whole villa, but as they moved deeper, most of the rooms entered his range.
Two presences—stronger than ordinary people—stood out inside a nearby room.
And in the basement, Ronin sensed an extremely faint presence—someone near death.
Ronin stopped. "Is your dad dead?"
"Don't know," Shizuku answered flatly, even to a question that blunt.
"Do you want to go check downstairs? Might be him." Ronin had a hunch—an instinct that formed the moment he sensed that dying presence below.
And sometimes an Enhancer's instincts were frighteningly accurate.
Shizuku hesitated. "Okay."
As Shizuku turned toward the stairs down, Ronin warned from behind, "Be careful."
The instant he said it, a hole suddenly appeared in the door ahead.
A tennis ball shot out like a bullet, aimed at the back of Shizuku's head.
Shizuku spun. Blinky appeared in her hands—not to suck, but to be swung like a racket.
Crack!
She smacked the ball away.
But in that same moment, Ronin saw a 0 appear above Shizuku's head—a number formed entirely of Nen.
Ronin glanced down.
White lines had already been drawn across the floor. Linking the broken doorway to the room beyond, the lines formed the clear layout of a tennis court.
A chair and a long net also appeared at the doorway—conjured into existence.
Inside stood a man nearly two meters tall—muscular, holding a tennis racket, wearing shorts and a polo shirt with a tennis cap.
Sharp, deep-set features. Hawk-like eyes locked onto Shizuku.
It was Spence—walking up from the basement.
Beside him stood another man dressed like a butler, hair immaculate, white gloves on his hands.
And that man's gaze was fixed entirely on Ronin.
Ronin's warning hadn't been for Shizuku to watch out for those two; it was for traps on the stairs.
He hadn't expected them to strike first.
The moment Shizuku saw the man, she called out his name: "Spence!"
Ronin had already suspected as much the instant he sensed him.
"Your opponent is me," the butler stepped into Ronin's line of sight.
Ronin also noticed the butler positioning himself closer to the only conjured chair on the court.
Court… scoring—
Ronin rapidly assembled the clues.
That chair represented the umpire.
In tennis, that was exactly where the referee sat.
If so… then what were Ronin and the butler before sitting there—ball boys?
Ball boys were just there to fetch balls and wipe sweat and hand towels.
The umpire, on the other hand, had authority.
But did Ronin have to follow their "game rules"?
Ronin's fingers produced coins. With one hand he flicked a spread of coins toward Spence on the tennis court; with the other he attacked the butler.
The instant the coins entered the court, Spence swung his racket.
And in that same moment, Ronin watched the coins transform into tennis balls midair. Spence struck them, and they screamed toward Shizuku even faster.
Meanwhile, the butler sidestepped cleanly, avoiding the coins, and raised both arms into a fighting stance.
Shizuku was intensely focused. Everything happening on the court was within her awareness.
Coins turning into tennis balls was sudden, but still within what she could accept. She kept treating Blinky as her racket, swinging to return the shot.
But the "tennis ball" turned back into a coin in mid-flight.
Shizuku sensed the coin's powerful Nen and felt danger flare. She twisted Blinky away, deliberately not making contact.
The coin flew out of the court.
Shizuku's overhead score instantly changed from 0 to 15.
Spence was already tossing a grenade. Without hesitation, he struck it with his racket.
The grenade became a tennis ball in the instant of impact—then turned back into a grenade as it flew at Shizuku.
Shizuku's lips moved. "Suck it in—then spit it out."
Her hand hit Blinky's switch.
A powerful suction erupted, and the grenade vanished into Blinky.
The next instant, suction stopped—and the grenade shot out of Blinky's mouth like a cannonball, blasting straight back toward Spence.