Large amounts of aura surged from the man's body and poured straight into the javelin.
In an instant the weapon blazed with intense light. At the same moment it left his hand and flew forward.
The sound of it tearing through the air only reached them when the javelin slammed into the scorpion's skull, still pinned down by the net.
Enhancer combined with Emitter.
Ronin quickly broke down the ability. The Enhancer aspect boosted the javelin's piercing power and throwing speed. The Emitter side kept the aura clinging to the weapon from fading once it left the user's body.
In other words, the man was an Emitter leaning heavily toward Enhancer.
He hadn't branched into spatial abilities. Instead he was using the Enhancer effect to push the javelin's raw destructive power even further.
This was someone who chased pure, overwhelming force.
The javelin punched clean through the giant scorpion's head. The aura still wrapped around the shaft detonated inside the creature's body, tearing it up from within.
The man clearly had some skill in Manipulation too—otherwise he wouldn't have been able to trigger such a precise internal explosion.
Not bad for a Hunter Association member. He'd developed his ability cleanly and effectively.
A textbook mountain-shaped training path.
Primary Emitter, secondary Enhancer, with a small amount of Manipulation support.
Ronin filed the man away in his memory. If he wasn't mistaken, his name was Colin.
The giant scorpion's vitality was monstrous. Even with its brain pierced, it thrashed and bucked violently on the ground.
But the net still held it fast, so the struggle was pointless.
The tiger-like beasts that had been circling nearby took one look at the dying scorpion and tucked their tails between their legs before slipping away into the trees.
"The beasts pouring out of the nest all act like they're driven by some kind of madness," Ronin said. "But these ones still know when to run. Does that mean something in here has manipulation-type abilities?"
Benket's voice carried clear doubt. "You're saying some monster has already awakened Nen?"
If that were true, the danger level of this nest would jump several tiers overnight.
"Not sure," Ronin replied. "Could just be some natural trait of the creature."
But deep down he leaned toward the idea that at least one monster had awakened Nen—even if only on instinct.
After all, Nen was life energy. Humans could master it. Chimera Ants could master it. Magical beasts could master it. It wasn't impossible for powerful monsters to awaken it by accident.
Without real intelligence they would probably use it purely on instinct.
But once Nen awakened, the threat level rose dramatically.
Benket understood the danger behind Ronin's words. Even though he didn't comment out loud, the entire team moved with noticeably more caution after that.
Clearly, others had taken the warning seriously.
The giant scorpion died quickly. Its massive corpse was an extremely valuable research specimen.
But out of the seventeen people here, only Ronin had a way to store large bodies. No one else showed any storage-type abilities.
Ronin himself had no real interest in keeping the scorpion. He wasn't going to waste capacity in the Fun Fun Cloth either. Saving Owl's Nen for later could prove useful during the exploration.
Once the scorpion was dead, the rest of the exploration became much easier.
At least the nearby creatures no longer attacked on sight. They adopted a wait-and-see attitude instead.
They lingered in the shadows of the trees. If anyone approached, they bared their teeth and growled warnings. But the moment someone actually attacked, they scattered like birds and beasts.
No one in the team wanted to waste energy on these common beast-type monsters.
So they let the creatures trail along at a distance while keeping someone on watch at all times.
The forest was enormous. The team kept pushing forward, but they found very little useful information.
The deeper they went, the more monsters appeared. Even the giant scorpions started showing up more frequently, along with several-meter-long centipedes.
Even with the gas mask on, Ronin could feel his breathing becoming easier.
Combined with the abnormally large insects, he had a theory: the oxygen concentration in this space was higher than outside.
Possibly over thirty percent.
Short-term exposure wouldn't cause problems. It might even boost metabolism and circulation.
Long-term, though, there was a real risk of oxygen toxicity.
More importantly, this high-oxygen environment with no natural predators like birds would easily allow insects to grow to enormous sizes.
On top of that, rich oxygen made fires far more likely. After all, Earth's Carboniferous period had ended in a series of massive wildfires.
Several others in the group seemed to have reached the same conclusion.
"High oxygen, giant insects, but some monsters aren't that big," Ronin muttered. "Yet plenty of them show arthropod traits."
After the giant centipedes came the giant ants.
They appeared in groups, acting like guardians of the forest. The moment they showed up, a strange rhythmic thumping sound began.
It sounded like the ants' feet striking the ground as they walked, but there was a deliberate pattern to it.
That rhythm made the beasts still lingering nearby grow even more agitated and aggressive.
When the thumping reached a peak, the first beast broke from the group and charged.
It was like lighting the fuse on a powder keg.
The rest of the circling beasts stopped holding back. They went berserk and rushed straight at Ronin's team.
Ronin's gaze cut past the charging beasts and locked onto the ants.
From the moment they appeared, the ants had been pacing back and forth at a distance, never getting close.
And on those ants, Ronin could clearly see Nen.
Ants. Nen. Intelligence. Plus the strange traits showing up on other monsters.
One dangerous name flashed through Ronin's mind.
Chimera Ants.
"Chimera Ants!"
Someone in the team who specialized in biology had been studying the creatures carefully. At the exact same moment the realization hit Ronin, the man shouted the name out loud.
It really was Chimera Ants.