The stone tablets recorded nothing but blood sacrifices.
People gained all kinds of powerful abilities through blood sacrifices. Then those who possessed that power went into the "Beast's Den" to fight.
The place called the "Beast's Den" appeared to be the central passage.
As for the humans used as sacrifices, they all came from the seemingly ordinary section deep inside the ruins—the one that looked most like a normal place for people to live, complete with farmland and an underground river running through it.
Everyone who benefited from the blood sacrifices had blood-red eyes.
They were Kurta.
In the ordinary section, Ronin had also found text that used a familiar term for the red-eyed people: the Red-Eyed Demon.
In this context, the name fit disturbingly well. After all, these were a people who sacrificed humans.
Kurapika couldn't quite accept it. Even if this branch of the Kurta was different from the one he knew, everything they had learned so far made this group sound like a clan of actual demons.
Ronin didn't rush to any conclusions.
In his mind, the only way to be sure was to enter the central passage and see what was really there.
The situation inside that passage was already strange enough. What bothered him even more was why these people had stayed underground at all. Why hadn't they tried to leave for the surface?
Especially the ordinary people living in the normal section.
There was an underground river right there. If they had followed it, they should have found a way out eventually.
But there were no signs anywhere in that section—no records, no traces of escape attempts, nothing. It was as if everyone had simply accepted that staying here was their best and only option.
Had the Kurta brainwashed the ordinary people? Or had something even worse than being sacrificed like livestock happened to anyone who tried to leave the underground for the surface?
The monsters from the middle passage came out like clockwork.
Right after dawn they swarmed forward in a frenzy.
The army had been ready. They poured ammunition into the creatures without holding back, yet the fighting still dragged on until five or six in the morning.
When it finally ended, the ruins stank of blood again.
Soldiers began cutting apart the monster corpses. Anything still intact—fur, teeth, claws—could be sold. The meat was hauled away and frozen. If the experts cleared it, it might even reach the market.
Plenty of monster bodies also littered the passages inside the ruins. Those had been taken down by the various exploration teams working together.
Ronin and the assembled group didn't wait for the soldiers to finish cleaning everything up.
The moment the battle stopped, they headed straight for the central passage where the monsters had stopped pouring out.
Seventeen people in total. The only faces Ronin recognized were Maschur, Vanessa, and the organizer, Benket.
Benket didn't waste time with speeches. After a short list of reminders, he led the way into the tunnel.
The passage reeked. Ronin had already pulled on his gas mask. The filtered air wasn't exactly pleasant, but at least it kept the urge to vomit under control.
If breathing got any worse, he still had oxygen tanks stored inside the Fun Fun Cloth.
Claw marks from every kind of beast covered the walls. Deeper in, they could hear constant roars and growls echoing from ahead.
The beasts that had attacked from the passage clearly weren't the only ones living in this nest.
The group moved carefully. After they passed through the long tunnel, the space suddenly opened up.
What lay before them was an underground forest.
When they looked up, glowing stones on the cavern ceiling cast strange, fantastical light across the trees.
The beast sounds they had heard earlier were coming from deeper inside that forest.
As the rest of the team emerged, several tiger-like creatures appeared near the forest edge by the passage. Their bodies carried traces of arthropod traits—segmented limbs, extra joints—that made them look even more powerful and aggressive.
They crouched low, teeth bared, eyes fixed on the intruders while low warning growls rumbled in their throats.
Ronin and the others had already seen plenty of these during the earlier monster waves, so they paid them little attention. Their focus went straight to the distance.
There, a giant scorpion several meters tall had turned toward the commotion. Its central eyes swiveled while its three pairs of side eyes locked onto the passage. Massive legs shifted across the ground as it started moving their way.
No Nen could be felt from it, but its sheer size was enough to make several faces in the group tighten.
They hadn't encountered anything like this during the waves. Benket's briefing before they entered had mentioned these large insects, though. Maybe the passage was too narrow for it to squeeze through. Maybe it simply served as some kind of guardian for the land outside.
Either way, anything that came through here drew its attention.
Ronin had never seen a scorpion that big. What really interested him was whether that massive tail carried venom.
Benket had known the giant scorpion would be waiting, so he had come prepared.
Two members of the team were already moving forward to meet it. One carried a javelin. The other held something that looked like a flat disk.
The disk user acted first. He simply hurled it ahead of the scorpion's path.
The disk landed. A large green net exploded outward from it, instantly covering the ground the scorpion would have to cross.
Ronin blinked.
He hadn't expected the man's Conjuration ability to create a trap that could exist independently once thrown.
The scorpion might have eight eyes, but its vision wasn't great. It relied far more on its other senses to hunt. Its intelligence wasn't exactly high, either.
Even though the trap had been deployed right in front of it, the scorpion stepped straight into the net without hesitation.
As the trap triggered, Ronin's attention shifted to the man still holding the javelin.