Ronin stepped closer to the house. As he approached, a new idea took shape.
The clinic was a two-story structure, roughly twenty meters long, fifteen wide, and eight high.
He placed his hand against the wall and closed his eyes, focusing his senses. He guided his aura to flow down the walls and spread across the ground, wrapping the bottom four inches of the foundation in Shu.
He stopped almost immediately.
The first five meters were easy; his Nen covered the area effortlessly. But as he tried to push it further, the energy consumption spiked while the effectiveness of the Shu plummeted.
It seemed five meters was the hard limit for his Enhancer abilities in this context.
Any further, and the aura just leaked away, dissipating faster the further it stretched.
Ronin removed his hand.
He'd already cooked up a brilliant workaround. He formed a cross-seal with his fingers.
Poof! Poof! Poof!
Three identical Shadow Clones appeared in bursts of smoke.
At the same time, he activated another jutsu: Earth Style: Super Lightened Boulder Jutsu, casting it directly on the house.
The three clones scrambled into position. Including the original, there was now one Ronin at each corner of the building. They placed their hands on the structure simultaneously. Aura surged out, coating the foundation in Shu until their flows connected perfectly.
With the prep work done, Ronin applied a little force. Thanks to the weight-reducing jutsu, the entire house tore free from the earth as if it were made of styrofoam.
"You're up!"
Shizuku rubbed her eyes hard when Ronin suddenly multiplied into four. She seriously doubted her own vision for a second.
Based on his fighting style earlier, Ronin was a textbook Enhancer.
But this level of independent, solid cloning? That was high-level Conjuration or Manipulation.
What shocked her even more was seeing him lift the entire two-story building as if it weighed nothing.
Despite her surprise, her reflexes didn't lag. The moment the house left the ground, her conjured vacuum, Blinky, appeared in her hands.
"Here goes. Suck it all up," Shizuku announced flatly, flipping the switch on the vacuum.
Instantly, a terrifying suction force erupted from Blinky's mouth. The massive house, positioned right in front of the nozzle, began to distort and shrink rapidly under the power of the vacuum. In the blink of an eye, the entire building vanished into the vacuum cleaner.
As the vacuum disappeared, a rare, faint smile touched Shizuku's usually blank face.
Ronin dispelled his Shadow Clones.
By this time, Kurapika and Neon had walked over. However, before they could get close, Shizuku dropped into a combat stance.
She clearly mistook them for elite members of the Cleaning Squad.
"Stand down. They're with me," Ronin called out.
Shizuku looked at the masks Kurapika and Neon were wearing, then back at Ronin's mask. Realization dawned on her, and she nodded, dropping her guard.
"We need to move. The Cleaning Squad won't give up this easily," Kurapika said, mirroring Shizuku's earlier sentiment.
"Next stop is Spence's estate. Once we kill him, Shizuku joins the team," Ronin explained the deal.
"Wait, Spence isn't dead?" Damian walked over, looking surprised. "I know where his estate is. Get in the car. This one's on the house."
---
The group piled back into Damian's beat-up sedan.
The car wove through the irregular gaps between vehicles on the street. When the gap was too tight, Damian didn't hesitate to trade paint, simply ramming the obstructing cars out of the way.
As they emerged onto the main road, sure enough, a squad of armed men was waiting for them.
However, the moment they spotted Ronin in the passenger seat, they didn't even raise their guns. They just silently stepped aside, opening a path.
This rendered the handful of stones Ronin had prepped completely useless.
He had been hoping they'd be stupid enough to open fire so he could show them the terrifying lethality of an Enhancer's pitching arm.
What a waste.
"That's the law of survival in Meteor City," Damian said with a mocking smirk. "You've heard the saying, right?"
"We reject no one, so take nothing from us," Kurapika recited softly.
"Exactly." Damian glanced at Ronin in the passenger seat. "You're an outsider. You can't hide that stench. If you stay here, you're looking at an endless hunt. Hell, they'll probably chase you even if you leave Meteor City."
"Doesn't matter," Ronin replied nonchalantly.
Even if Shizuku acted as a beacon drawing every hitman in the city to him, Ronin wasn't worried.
Meteor City was full of madmen, sure, but they weren't all mindless.
Against crazy people, you just had to be crazier than them. Then they would be the ones feeling fear.
It was the same with the Phantom Troupe.
When Ronin was weak, the Troupe hunted him for sport. But now that he was strong enough to be a threat? The dynamic had flipped.
That motto applied to Ronin, too: He rejected no one, but nobody better try to take anything from him.
He had already dealt with the Ten Dons. How hard could a Meteor City Elder be?
The car sped through the streets. Meteor City wasn't as desolate or decaying as one might imagine.
Along the way, they passed decent-looking shops, schools, hospitals, and even the Cleaning Bureau headquarters.
"Meteor City has had over a thousand years to develop. It's nothing like what the outside world's records show, though it is still a place abandoned by God." Damian lit a cigarette, blowing smoke out the window. "In the past, the world chose Meteor City to be its trash can. But now? Meteor City chooses to be the world's trash can."
Ronin felt there was a deeper meaning in Damian's words, though he didn't quite grasp it.
As they drove deeper into the city, Ronin spotted a church-like spire in the distance, backed by towering mountains of refuse.
He wondered if that was the area where Chrollo and the others had grown up.
Passing through that zone, the buildings became sparse, though the garbage remained plentiful. Strangely, tall trees began to appear.
The car turned off the street onto a smaller dirt path.
"Spence's estate is deep in these woods. People who live in the trash too long get desperate to escape it once they get a taste of power," Damian explained. "This forest is a rarity in Meteor City, so naturally, it became the perfect hideout for the elite."
"Well, the air here is definitely better than by the garbage heaps," Neon remarked, looking out the window.
Her comment lacked persuasiveness, however, considering she hadn't taken her gas mask off since they arrived.