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Brennan's death made sure no one else tried to get in Ronin and Vanessa's way.
Ronin didn't waste time. He dropped straight into Earth Style, softening the collapsed earth and stone in front of them into a thick, flowing slurry. Then he summoned a massive stone golem to do the heavy digging, its huge hands tearing through the blockage like wet clay.
Once Ronin and Vanessa stepped through the tunnel the golem had carved, he cut the chakra flow. The construct crumbled back into loose rubble behind them, sealing the passage once more.
The explorers still stuck on the other side stared at the freshly closed wall of dirt and stone.
Keep digging, or wait until the two of them came back out?
The answer split them fast.
Some kept working, determined to push deeper no matter what. Others gathered in small groups, voices low and tense. The ones still digging were mostly the people who had been blocked earlier. The ones talking strategy were all from Brennan's crew.
It didn't take long for Brennan's people to split into two camps.
One group had seen what Ronin could do. They knew the Rock Mercenary Group stood behind him. Even if it meant picking up scraps, they decided it was safer to keep digging and follow the same path.
The other group—Brennan's closer friends—had a different idea.
They would wait.
Let Ronin and the woman do all the hard work. Let them find whatever treasures were hidden deeper in the ruins. Then, when they tried to come back out, the ambush would be waiting.
Why risk their own necks when someone else could do the exploring for them?
Ronin didn't know any of this, and even if he had, he wouldn't have cared. The moment he killed Brennan, he had already assumed he might have to fight several Nen users at once on the way back.
Still, Brennan's crew seemed weaker than expected. After their leader died, none of them had the spine to step forward.
A team like that could scheme all they wanted. It wouldn't change anything.
Ronin and Vanessa moved fast with the stone golem clearing the way, but the tunnel was long. Really long.
As they dug, it became obvious that the collapsed section had once been living quarters. Rooms. Homes. But there were no bodies. No skeletons. No signs that people had died here in a rush or a fight.
It was like the entire population had simply packed up and left one night.
During the digging, they found another piece of traditional Kurta clothing. This one was even more damaged than the first, crushed under layers of stone and dirt, but the distinctive style was still recognizable.
One could be coincidence. Two was harder to dismiss.
They also started finding small bottles and jars scattered through the rubble. Everyday things. The deeper they went, the stronger the feeling of ordinary life became.
Then the softened earth finally gave way to open space.
A single illumination stone sailed out through the hole Ronin had made. Its pale glow wasn't bright, but it was enough. Ronin's En picked up no living presences nearby, so the only real concern was what might be waiting farther out.
The stone hit the floor with a clear, ringing sound that echoed for a long time.
The rock golem dissolved into rubble. Ronin and Vanessa stepped out of the tunnel and listened.
Nothing moved. No footsteps. No breathing. No distant growls.
Only silence and the faint echo of the stone still rolling somewhere far below.
More illumination stones flew from Vanessa's hands, scattering across the floor in every direction. Each one lit only a small patch, but together they gave her enough shadow to work with if she needed to vanish. They also let Ronin take in the space properly.
They were standing in a large hall. Ronin tilted his head back and fired a weak Nen bullet straight up.
The faint light revealed a high, vaulted ceiling—easily eight meters overhead. The entire structure twisted upward in a slow, unnatural spiral. Strange fixtures that might once have been lights hung from the curving stone, each one warped into the same twisting vortex shape.
Ronin stared at the spiral patterns and felt a strange tug of familiarity. He couldn't place it.
Three other passages led out of the hall. All of them curved toward the right side—away from the middle passage that supposedly held the worst monsters.
They picked one at random and started down.
The passage itself was a long, descending spiral staircase. After nearly a hundred meters, the stairs opened into a wide space that made both of them stop.
Glowing blue plants covered the floor, their curled leaves giving off a soft, eerie light. The glow revealed round, tent-like structures scattered throughout the chamber. Each tent was marked with the same spiral pattern.
The moment Ronin saw the tents, the familiarity finally clicked.
Those exact spiral designs. That exact tent style. He had seen them before.
In the hidden Kurta village.
The curled, spiral-leaved plants were common there. The tents were identical.
But instead of warmth or recognition, Ronin felt his skin crawl. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
Something was wrong here.
He didn't stop. He pushed open the flap of the nearest tent.
Inside lay a skeleton on a simple bed. The bones were still dressed in traditional Kurta clothing, though the fabric had long since fused with the glowing plants growing through the room. The style was unmistakable.
But the skeleton itself was wrong.
The bones were slightly twisted. Not broken—twisted. As if the body had slowly turned, pulled into the same spiral shape that dominated the entire space.
Like it had tried to become part of the vortex itself.
Ronin stared at the distorted skeleton and felt a cold, ugly memory rise up.
Junji Ito's Uzumaki.
The horror manga about a town cursed by spirals. People twisting, warping, merging into the giant vortex that eventually swallowed everything.
He couldn't remember exactly what the story had been trying to say. It had been too long. But the images of people slowly turning into grotesque, spiral-shaped horrors had stayed with him.
Now he was looking at something uncomfortably similar.
Had the Kurta Clan suffered the same kind of curse?
A vortex that didn't just kill them… but changed them?