Ronin didn't make any sudden moves. Everything stayed on hold until Kurapika and the others were inside the game.
Shizuku still wasn't ready to take on a Phantom Troupe fighter head-on by herself. But with Neon and Kurapika backing her from the flanks, she had a real shot at dropping one. The other two were Ronin's problem.
Abachi got no orders yet. Kurapika would sort her out once he entered. Spell cards could turn any fight into a nightmare, so they needed to prep hard—especially to make sure nobody pulled a [Leave] card and bailed.
Ronin wasn't striking early, but he wasn't sitting idle either. He needed hard numbers on how many Troupe members were actually inside.
He picked players who still had Troupe names glowing in their card books and sent them flying with [Magnetic] straight to the Spiders' location. The second they landed, they burned [Beginner] and snapped right back to the starting point. Ronin waited in ambush nearby.
If any Troupe members took the bait and chased, he'd hit them with the Far Eye Technique and get a clean read. He already knew the three they'd spotted up close—their auras were locked in his memory. That covered half the technique's requirements. The rest was just distance.
If nobody came after them, the returning scouts would burn [Again] and jump right back to the contact point. If the Troupe had moved on, Ronin would slap on a Transformation disguise and go himself. If they were still there, the scout would just hit [Beginner] again and return.
He had four [Beginner], two [Magnetic], and sixteen [Again] cards. Plenty of rope to play with.
Lev, Phinks, and Feitan had been hunting intel on [Angel's Breath] since the second they entered the game. Progress sucked. Ten years in and plenty of cards still had zero known drop methods. [Angel's Breath] was one of them.
After digging around and checking in with Hisoka about the in-game situation, Lev's crew finally caught a lead.
The clue sat in the shops of Masadora. Keep buying spell cards for more than ten straight days—at least forty a day—and you'd get a message: "They say if you collect every single spell card, you'll receive heaven's blessing."
That was it. Simple. But it locked in the whole game plan: gather all forty spell cards.
The three used stolen cash to clear the prerequisite. Now the real grind was collecting the rest.
Easy cards you could just buy straight from the shop. The hard ones required buying bags—three random spell cards per bag. What you pulled depended on luck and whatever was still floating around out there.
Lev's crew straight-up occupied the spell card shop entrance. Anyone who bought cards got robbed the second they walked out.
That only lasted three days.
The city slapped them with red-name status. Every NPC gave them filthy looks after the three beat the guards senseless and carded them. The trio didn't give a shit.
Worse, once players realized anyone buying spell cards was mysteriously vanishing, nobody came to Masadora anymore.
So they changed tactics.
They left for the gambling city of Dulias, robbed a bunch of people blind, and walked away with [Risk Dice] cards and a fat stack of cash. Robbing was the fastest, easiest, most familiar way they knew to make money.
They rolled back into Masadora, started grabbing players, and forced them into the shop to buy spell card bags. Then they made the poor bastards roll the dice. Good roll? Crack the bag open. Bad roll? Toss them out of the shop and let them die.
Pretty soon Masadora was a ghost town. Anyone with half a brain knew a demonic trio had moved in—psychopaths who treated human life like cheap garbage.
That's exactly when one of the guys Ronin had grabbed earlier—the same unlucky bastard Lev's crew had already robbed once in Masadora—used [Magnetic] and dropped right at the spell card shop door.
Even the guy inside who was bored out of his skull watching people roll [Risk Dice] glanced up with a flicker of surprise. Then pure glee hit his face. He was about to lunge and grab the newcomer.
But the guy who just landed took one look at the scene inside, saw exactly what was happening, and instantly burned another card to shoot straight back into the sky.
"Huh?" Feitan muttered, confused.
They were already out of [Risk Dice] anyway. B-rank card, only thirty in the whole game. Even with copying, they didn't have enough left.
Good news though: after forcing seven dice rolls, they had thirty-six unique spell cards.
Only four left: [Prison], [God's Eye], [Mimic], and [Leave].
The first two were S-rank—only ten copies each. The last two were rarer but not quite as brutal.
"What the hell was that?" Lev turned toward the window, his whole body wrapped in bandages, radiating pure gloomy menace.
"Probably just some scout checking us out," Phinks shrugged.
They hadn't exactly been subtle. Drop a crew that broke every rule in a normally quiet game and of course people were gonna notice.
"We're almost out of [Copy] and [Risk Dice]. Want to chase him down?" Phinks rolled his wrist.
"Yeah," Lev said, flipping open his card book and pulling out [Accompany].
In that split-second eye contact, Lev had already recognized the unlucky bastard they'd robbed once before.
Every player they let walk during the shop raids was just free-range sheep in their eyes—endless walking resources on the hoof.
Just like now.