Netero's account left a door open. Things from the Dark Continent could reach Mobius Lake.
The thought that had just formed went out.
If those creatures almost never made the crossing, the Chimera Ants would have had to be carried in. Ancestors, or the Gatekeeper looking the other way.
And if the Dark Gate were a one-way valve, and the Gatekeeper did not play games, sitting tight inside Mobius Lake would have been the sane play. Send a team. Confirm the ground. Bring the survivors home. Not clean. Cleaner than waiting on a gatekeeper's mood.
Fantasy.
If V5 could cut the Gatekeeper out and run the route themselves, the Gatekeeper would already be gone. Even the scraps humans had found on the Dark Continent's edge were enough to make V5 gamble.
That was when the Gatekeeper's rule started to make sense.
Look. If you come back empty, you pay. Curiosity with nothing under it did not get a free pass.
Netero kept talking. Ronin kept listening.
The fight had left the old man in a good mood. He would not have given this much away otherwise.
His picture of the Dark Continent still collapsed to one word.
Big.
"Huge," Netero said. "Whatever it is, it is huge. A human being is nothing there. That is not what I am after."
His eyes came back to Ronin.
"What I want is the end of martial work. Will you come at me again?"
"Yes."
No pause.
Ronin was not hunting that particular extreme. He liked the fight. He liked the feeling of working on a blade's edge. The challenge would come back.
Not soon. Nen and ninjutsu both needed more weight on them. He had to put himself together harder than this or he would never catch the man.
Next time, he wanted Netero to be the one leaving the platform.
The smile that answered him was the most honest thing Netero had worn all day.
At the door, Ronin still asked.
"Do you know how Beyond will come at you?"
"I don't want to."
The answer was clean. What sat in Netero's eyes was interest.
Ronin opened his mouth and shut it. He kept the guess.
He had already decided the other piece. If the Chimera Ants made landfall in NGL, he would be the first one there, and he would not be gentle.
He was curious. How heavy the Ant King really was. Whether anything short of Gon's burst could put Neferpitou down. What a king looked like after it had eaten Youpi and Shaiapouf and come back.
None of that weighed what hundreds of thousands of corpses weighed.
If he got the chance, he would kill the nest in the egg.
Beans had given him a suite. The Association airship was wide and expensive.
While they had talked Dark Continent, the ship had already left Trick Tower and turned for the next rest point. The tower was not the end of this year's exam. More tests waited. The airship was how candidates moved.
Ronin called Kurapika and laid the crossing out. Recruit, or go with the people they already had. Either way, it needed a conversation.
"The ship is the problem," Kurapika said, after he had the whole picture.
"I don't have the chart yet. The Chairman said Beans will bring it in the next two days."
Without a chart, finding a coastline that might not even be drawn was already a problem. Finding the Dark Gate behind it was worse.
"All right. I'm almost finished here. I'll come to you later. Pairo with me."
Ronin took a second to find the question.
"How was it?"
"Manageable. Chrollo didn't tear the homeland up. He left work behind. I dealt with it."
The voice had gone low.
"All right."
Ronin did not have a better line.
"Ronin."
He had been about to hang up.
"Pairo's ready."
"What?"
Kurapika drew a breath.
"He's accepted that he's dead. He doesn't think he should stay in the living world for long. When we meet next, he leaves. His eyes go to you."
"All right."
Pairo was not wrong. Dead was dead. A cheat that put a dead man on his feet was not a resurrection. Dust went back to dust.
"I'll look at the road ahead for him."
The Kurta had a claim on him. A promise that fit inside what he could actually do was cheap enough to make.
"Thank you."
Not Kurapika repeating it. Pairo's voice, quieter, came through the receiver.
The line died. Ronin sat with the phone in his hand for a long time.
Netero moved fast. Beans arrived with a map the next morning.
It was simple. One course, drawn straight to the Gatekeeper.
Ronin took what he had come for, collected his people, and left the Association ship.
He knew the visit would reach Pariston. What reached Pariston would reach Beyond. He did not know what version of the story would travel.
The ship problem had a workaround. Bring more than one hull. He had two spatial users. Owl's Great Cloth and Shizuku's Blinky would both earn their keep. Neon's reading would let him pick a safer window to leave.