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"I'll keep my promise." Shizuku's face was still splattered with Spence's blood from his gruesome end.
Yet, the crimson stains somehow gave her a strangely captivating allure.
Ronin's gaze, however, drifted past Spence's mangled remains and focused toward the basement. That faint trace of a presence hadn't completely faded yet.
"Let's check downstairs first."
Without giving Shizuku a chance to say anything else, Ronin turned and headed for the basement.
Shizuku opened her mouth to speak, then glanced down at the pulped corpse on the floor. She didn't activate Blinky, quietly dismissing the vacuum instead.
Sure enough, there was someone in the basement.
When Shizuku saw the man, a flicker of emotion finally broke her stoic gaze. She quickly stepped forward.
But she found him already lingering at death's door.
She didn't look particularly sad; in fact, Ronin caught a hint of confusion in her eyes.
Yet, on the face of the man who weakly opened his eyes on the floor, Ronin saw a sense of profound relief.
Ronin attempted to use Mystical Palm Jutsu to heal him, but it was no use. The man's injuries were too severe. By the time they arrived, his life was already burning out.
Opening his eyes now was nothing more than a final surge of adrenaline before the end.
The man's gaze stayed fixed on Shizuku's face until his eyes slowly fluttered shut for the last time. Ronin noticed that, at some point, tears had begun streaming down Shizuku's cheeks.
Shizuku vacuumed up the man's body.
As they walked out of the basement, she rapped her knuckles hard against her own head.
"I took a really bad hit once. I forgot a lot of things. My memory's been messed up ever since," Shizuku's voice drifted from behind him, still carrying that rational, detached tone.
"Got it," Ronin nodded.
The fact that she could ask for a name and forget it seconds later was proof enough that something was definitely wrong with her head.
Now that she brought it up, Ronin thought back to the photos Damian had given him.
In those pictures, Shizuku's head had been covered in blood. Ronin had suspected it might have been her own.
It seemed that even with all those photos, Damian hadn't managed to piece the whole story together.
Something must have gone down before Damian even tracked her.
And that was the missing piece of the puzzle.
"Do you want to keep digging? There might be more to this," Ronin asked.
Shizuku shook her head. "There might be another Elder pulling the strings behind all this, but it doesn't matter anymore.
I know for a fact that Spence's men caused my head injury, and they killed my mother. My father... Well, with Spence dead, this whole thing can finally be put to rest.
If we keep investigating, it's just going to drag more people from Meteor City into the crossfire and get them killed. I have a feeling you can never truly kill everyone behind the curtain."
"Fine by me." Ronin wasn't particularly eager to keep up the slaughter anyway.
Since Shizuku was dropping it, he had nothing else to say. Getting out of there was the priority.
But before they could even step foot out of the estate, Ronin's phone buzzed.
The caller ID showed Kurapika.
"Yeah?"
"I caught some guys you might want to see. Come to the woods west of the estate," Kurapika said quickly.
Ronin and Shizuku exchanged a glance before breaking into a sprint toward Kurapika's location.
Minutes later, they arrived in the woods. Kurapika and Neon were waiting, standing over two young men dressed like street thugs who were forced to their knees.
"They work for Ryan, another Elder who swings a lot of weight in Meteor City," Kurapika explained, outing the captives. "According to them, they've been staking this place out for a while."
Ronin noticed that both of them were just ordinary guys, not Nen users.
"So Ryan is the other target?" Ronin's mind worked quickly, connecting the dots to reach an obvious conclusion.
If this required actual detective work, he wasn't exactly cut out for it.
But since he knew the guy's identity and had two of his lackeys dead to rights, following the breadcrumbs to hunt him down would be a walk in the park.
"Want to go pay Ryan a visit?" Ronin looked at Shizuku.
"You call the shots. I'm good with whatever," Shizuku replied. "We had a deal. You helped me kill Spence, so from now on, I listen to you and join your team. I'm not backing out now."
Ronin thought it over for a second. "Let's check it out, then. Hopefully, this guy is who I'm looking for."
If there was anyone else worth poaching in Meteor City besides Shizuku...
In Ronin's memory, there was only one specific Elder who fit the bill.
The guy possessed a bizarrely unique Nen ability. According to Chrollo, this Elder's ability didn't vanish after he died; instead, it grew even stronger and ended up stored in Chrollo's 'Skill Hunter' book.
Could Ryan be that Elder?
Ronin rapidly formed hand seals, then planted a single hand onto the head of one of the captive thugs.
Chakra surged into the man's mind. Ninja Art: Mind Reading! The captive's memories began playing back at high speed before Ronin's eyes.
He quickly found the intel he needed, but he also stumbled across something else in the guy's head.
It was about Shizuku.
Over a week ago, under the cover of darkness, Shizuku had fled Spence's estate, clutching her bleeding head.
This thug had tracked her. Although he couldn't match her speed, he arrived at her family's clinic just as the chaos erupted and watched her escape again from the perimeter.
The memory of her fleeing perfectly matched the backdrop of the photos Damian had provided.
Ronin pulled his hand back, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead.
Reading minds wasn't a walk in the park. It didn't burn much chakra, but the mental toll was exhausting.
"Let's move." He didn't mention everything he had just seen.
Ronin signaled the group, casually disposing of Ryan's two lackeys on the way out.
Ryan's mansion wasn't tucked away in the woods. He clearly loved being worshipped, so he had obnoxiously built his estate right in the middle of Meteor City's most impoverished slums.
He wanted every bottom-feeder there to know that he, Ryan, was the undisputed king of this patch of Meteor City.
A god that these filthy beggars could never hope to touch in a lifetime.
Ronin couldn't quite wrap his head around Ryan's twisted logic from the thug's memories. He had a feeling there was more to it than just a massive ego trip.
Damian was long gone, but there were plenty of brand-new cars parked at Spence's estate.
Ronin took the wheel, driving the four members of his newly formed crew.
Kurapika and Neon had already taken off their masks and introduced themselves.
Neither of them showed any hostility toward Shizuku. That was probably thanks to her appearance.
Even with her perpetual deadpan expression, she looked like the quintessential girl next door—the kind of person who was naturally easy to be around.