"The distortion on objects seems to be speeding up."
Ronin held up a pencil he had deliberately left inside the ruins the day before. It was now completely twisted into a spiral shape.
"The plants on the ground are glowing brighter too," Kurapika added.
His meaning was clear. He believed the blue spiral plants covering the floor were the source of the distortion.
Those plants lit up the entire sealed section, and their glow was bringing unexpected changes with it.
"The energy covering the spiral plants feels exactly like Ten," Ronin agreed.
He still found it hard to believe. How could plants produce Ten?
The spiral plants were weak. An ordinary person could pluck and crush them by hand. Yet somehow they carried the signature of aura.
Worse, the effect seemed to grow stronger the more people entered the depths. It felt like the glowing blue plants were absorbing life energy from every living thing that stepped into their range.
But Ronin's Shadow Clones hadn't reported any loss of energy or strength.
So how were the plants growing stronger?
It couldn't be that simply twisting objects was enough to feed them.
Ronin hadn't detected any aura on the distorted items. Energy couldn't just appear from nothing. They were missing something.
Besides the distortion problem, another team had found stone tablets covered in bloody ritual writing inside the grim section of the ruins.
Ronin only cared about the text. After paying a fee, he easily got permission to photograph the tablets and study them.
The writing was similar to the Kurta prayer he had found earlier, but there were clear differences.
He couldn't read it himself, so he posted a translation request on the Hunter website. He didn't even need to leave the ruins to get the results.
During the process, Ronin realized something important.
Exploring, developing, and researching ruins was extremely expensive. If the goal was just to pull out artifacts and sell them, it could be profitable. But if someone actually wanted to understand the ancient history, they either needed deep knowledge or deep pockets.
Ronin knew he couldn't master the knowledge overnight, but he was willing to learn.
Ruins exploration wasn't something that could be finished in a day or two. Especially since monsters kept pouring out of the middle passage at regular intervals, attacking anyone inside the ruins.
It felt like the middle passage was some kind of monster spawn point.
If they didn't destroy the source, no matter how many times the army and explorers cleared the waves, more monsters would keep coming.
While exploring the right-hand passage, Ronin ran into a Hunter Association member named Benket.
Benket's goal was simple: he wanted to gather everyone in the ruins to launch a joint assault on the middle passage. Ideally, they would push deep enough to find out why so many monsters were appearing and eliminate the root cause.
Only then could people explore in peace instead of constantly worrying about the next attack.
Ronin had no objections.
Ever since he had claimed the right-hand passage, most of the monsters that spilled into it during the waves ended up being handled by him. The numbers weren't huge each time, but dealing with them repeatedly was a waste of energy.
He had also noticed that the longer they stayed in the ruins, the more monsters seemed to appear with each wave.
If they ignored it, the middle passage would eventually become a serious threat.
Maschur was also with Ronin at the moment, basically representing Muir's stance.
Maschur had come to talk about the same problem.
The giant spiders in the underground city had been completely wiped out. During the cleanup, they discovered a passage on the cave ceiling that connected directly to the middle section.
Muir suspected the recent increase in monsters spilling out was caused by the spiders' disappearance.
Before anyone entered the underground city, the spiders and the monster nest had maintained a delicate balance. Once the spiders started rampaging and were then slaughtered by outsiders, that balance broke.
Even so, there was still another issue: the monsters in the nest reproduced extremely fast.
V5's experts had a theory. The nest might function like an ant colony or beehive, with a single queen or mother entity constantly producing offspring.
If they could locate and kill that mother, the monsters' numbers would drop sharply or stop reproducing altogether. Then they would only need to finish off the remaining ones, and the ruins would no longer face constant monster attacks.
Ronin accepted Benket's invitation to join the operation.
There was strength in numbers.
The planned date was two days from now. According to the pattern, the next monster wave would hit tomorrow. Once that wave was dealt with, it would be the best time to push into the middle section.
The Kurta section no longer required constant Shadow Clone surveillance.
Experienced explorers could easily hide valuable finds even under watch, especially with all the strange abilities out there. Ronin couldn't realistically kill people over every suspicious item, so strict monitoring was pointless.
Instead of watching everyone like a hawk, it was better to use incentives. If someone found something valuable, he could buy it at a fair price. If it wasn't useful, everyone could part ways cleanly.
This approach made Ronin's group look more like merchants stationed at the entrance than tyrants. It also improved how the other explorers viewed them.
His earlier heavy-handed tactics had left many people wary and distrustful. Paying for the stone tablet translations had already helped ease tensions.
But when the translation of the bloody ritual text came back, both Ronin and Kurapika frowned deeply.