"I'll keep my promise," Shizuku said, her face still splashed with blood from Spence's death.
Strangely, the blood gave her a different kind of beauty.
Ronin's gaze passed over Spence and went toward the basement instead—the faint aura he'd sensed down there still hadn't fully disappeared.
"Let's check downstairs first."
Without giving Shizuku time to say more, Ronin turned and headed for the basement.
Shizuku opened her mouth, then glanced at the mangled corpse on the floor. She didn't activate Blinky—she quietly dismissed it.
There really was someone in the basement.
And when Shizuku saw him, something in her eyes wavered. She hurried forward—
only to find the man was at the very end.
Her expression didn't show much grief; Ronin even saw a hint of confusion in her eyes.
But on the man's face, Ronin saw relief.
Ronin tried to heal him with Mystical Palm, but it was useless. The injuries were too severe—by the time they arrived, the man's life was already at its limit.
The fact that he could open his eyes at all felt like a final flicker before the candle went out.
The man's gaze stayed on Shizuku's face. After a long moment, his eyes slowly closed.
And Ronin noticed: Shizuku had been crying for some time without realizing it.
Shizuku stored the man's body away.
When they came back up, she knocked hard on her own head.
"I was badly injured once," Shizuku said from behind, her voice still calm and rational. "I forgot a lot of things. Even my memory got… messed up."
"Yeah." Ronin nodded.
Telling him her name and then forgetting it almost immediately was proof enough that something was wrong with her head.
Now that she said it outright, Ronin thought again of the photos Damian had shown—Shizuku's head had been bloody in them. He'd wondered then if that blood was hers.
It seemed Damian had captured plenty of photos, but still couldn't piece the real story together.
Something must have happened before Damian found her.
And that was probably the key.
"Do you want to dig deeper?" Ronin asked. "There might be more going on."
Shizuku shook her head. "Maybe there's another elder behind all this, but it doesn't matter anymore.
I know the people who hurt me were Spence's. My mother was killed by Spence's people. My father…"
She paused, then continued, flatly: "So once Spence is dead, it's over.
If we keep digging, we'll only drag more people into this and kill them. And I have a feeling whoever's behind it can't be killed cleanly anyway."
"No objections." Ronin didn't particularly want to keep slaughtering either.
If Shizuku didn't want to pursue it, Ronin wasn't going to force it. Leaving was the priority.
But before they could exit the manor, Ronin's phone rang.
Kurapika.
"Hello?"
"I caught some people you might care about," Kurapika said quickly. "Come to the forest west of the manor."
Ronin and Shizuku exchanged a look and sprinted.
Minutes later, they reached the woods. Kurapika and Neon were there, and two thug-looking young men were kneeling in front of them.
"They're Ryan's men," Kurapika said. "Ryan is another elder with serious power in Meteor City. According to them, they've been watching this place for a long time."
Ronin noticed they were just ordinary people.
"So Ryan's the other target," Ronin said, connecting the dots and arriving at a conclusion.
He wasn't great at "investigation."
But once you had a name—and you had two underlings in hand—following the trail was easy for Ronin.
"Want to meet Ryan?" Ronin asked Shizuku.
"You decide. I don't care," Shizuku replied. "We agreed: you kill Spence, and I join your team. I'm not backing out now."
Ronin thought for a moment. "Then let's go see him. I hope he's the person I'm looking for."
In Ronin's memory, besides Shizuku, there was one other thing in Meteor City worth "intercepting."
An elder.
Someone with an extremely special Nen ability—special enough that, by Chrollo's account, it didn't disappear after death. It became stronger, and Chrollo preserved it inside Bandit's Secret.
Was Ryan that elder?
Ronin formed seals and placed one hand on a captive's head.
Chakra flowed in—Ninja Art: Eye Mind Reading activated—and the captive's memories began playing under Ronin's gaze.
Soon, Ronin found what he wanted.
And in those memories, he also saw other things—about Shizuku.
More than ten days earlier, Shizuku had been fleeing Spence's manor at night, clutching her head.
They'd pursued her. They couldn't match her speed, but when a confrontation erupted at Shizuku's clinic, they arrived and saw her escape again from the outside.
That "escape" scene matched the background of Damian's photos.
Ronin pulled his hand back, sweat beading at his temple.
Reading memories wasn't easy—the main cost wasn't chakra, but mental strain.
"Let's move." Ronin didn't share everything he'd seen.
He gave the signal—and casually disposed of the two of Ryan's lackeys.
Ryan's villa wasn't in the forest. He seemed to enjoy being worshiped, so he had built it flamboyantly in the poorest part of Meteor City.
He wanted every bottom-feeder to know: Ryan was the king of this land.
Someone those "stinking beggars" could never reach in their lifetime.
Ronin didn't buy the simplistic logic from the underlings' memories. He doubted things were as straightforward as they believed.
Damian had already left, but Spence's manor had fresh vehicles.
Ronin drove. In the car were the four members of Ronin's team, including himself.
Kurapika and Neon had removed their masks and introduced themselves.
Neither of them showed any obvious rejection toward Shizuku—perhaps because of her appearance.
Even with her blank expression, Shizuku looked like a gentle "girl-next-door" type—someone it was easy to feel close to.