The moment Ronin finished writing his name, everything changed.
A new sensation settled deep in his chest. Right now, all he had to do was form the right hand seals and he could summon this giant serpent anytime, anywhere.
Whether the serpent would actually act like a partner once it appeared… that was a different story.
Because the massive snake currently pinned under the rock giants still glared at him with pure hatred and fury burning in its vertical pupils.
Ronin simply rolled the scroll shut and canceled the Four Symbols Seal at the same time.
The instant the restraints vanished, the serpent lunged for him again. Susanoo flared into existence in a heartbeat and slammed it back down for a second round of total domination.
The giant snake kept thrashing, but its eyes had cleared a little.
"I don't know if you can understand me," Ronin said, sounding every bit the classic villain, "but I'm not here to kill you. I just want to enslave you."
He looked down at the serpent from inside Susanoo's towering frame, the sheer pressure crushing the air around them.
"Submit… or stay pinned under me forever."
Ronin had zero intention of killing it.
This was the first being that had completed a contract with him—the first creature he could actually summon. He wasn't about to let it die here.
Anger still blazed in the serpent's eyes, but its body finally stopped fighting.
After being forced down twice in a row, even it could tell it was completely outmatched by the human in front of it.
It also wasn't some mindless beast. It understood the two choices Ronin had just laid out.
It just hated both of them.
Susanoo's massive hand clamped down harder. The serpent's body was ground into the dirt with even greater force.
Ronin considered whether he should leave some kind of permanent mark on the snake to make it more obedient.
In that exact moment the serpent finally sensed the cold danger and malice rolling off him.
He might not kill it… but he still had plenty of other ways to make its life miserable.
The giant snake went completely still. Then, slowly, it lowered its head to the ground.
Submission.
It didn't want to die.
Ronin was almost surprised. He'd expected the serpent to be a stubborn nightmare to tame. Turns out he'd been overthinking it.
"Can you actually understand what I'm saying?" he asked again.
At the same time he eased Susanoo's pressure just enough to give the snake a little room to move.
Susanoo's free hand, however, clenched into a tight fist. The second the serpent tried anything, that fist would crush its skull.
The giant snake studied Ronin for a long moment. Finally it gave a slow, deliberate nod.
"Can you leave this place?" Ronin gestured around the cavern.
That was the question that really mattered. If the serpent could leave the cave, he'd have a whole new set of problems to solve—like where the hell he was supposed to keep a monster this size.
The cave wasn't exactly a great long-term home. The spiders alone were a constant threat.
Still, there were things here that interested him… namely those two giant trees.
The serpent's answer was a clear shake of its head.
Then it turned its gaze toward the massive trees. Ronin followed its line of sight but couldn't figure out what it was trying to show him.
Only when Susanoo fully released it and the serpent slowly climbed back up into the branches, ripped an egg free, and swallowed it whole did Ronin finally understand.
The eggs hanging from the giant trees were the serpent's food.
Looked like the snake and the trees had a symbiotic relationship.
The trees produced the serpent's meals. The serpent coiled in the branches and protected the trees in return.
The most critical piece of the entire ecosystem was still the endless spider swarm—raw fertilizer for the trees.
Under normal conditions the fire-vulnerable monsters hatching from those same trees were more than enough to hold the spiders back… and even hunt them to feed the trees.
The only real variable had been the Chimera Ants that used to live here.
Once Ronin pieced the whole picture together, a strong hunch settled in his gut: someone had deliberately released the Chimera Ants into this cave specifically to rebalance the system when the trees started losing ground to the spiders.
If that was true, then as long as he kept the balance intact, the Ants dying didn't matter at all.
As for the serpent being unable to leave… Ronin couldn't have cared less.
In fact, it made everything easier.
Feeding a snake this enormous for a whole year would have been a logistical nightmare.
While he used Mystical Palm Technique to heal the serpent's wounds, Ronin slowly explained his plan.
The snake only cared about two things.
First: its own life.
Second: its food source—the continued survival of the giant trees.
Ronin gave it solid guarantees on both.
That only made the serpent stare at him with a look of pure, deep resentment. If he'd just said all this from the start instead of beating the hell out of it, it would have accepted these excellent terms without a fight.
That resentful glare vanished completely the moment Ronin tested the Summoning Jutsu and called the serpent to him.
The sudden, impossible teleportation finally made the giant snake understand exactly what Ronin had done to it.
It no longer had any real choice.
According to Ronin, the second the contract was signed, the serpent had become his pet.
Calling it a "pet" felt a little insulting to a creature this proud… but the snake grudgingly accepted it.
Once man and serpent had grown a little more familiar with each other, Kurapika and the others finally entered the cave and saw the full situation.
They hadn't brought the golden throne back.
Its real value couldn't be realized down here. Only by sending it to the Yorknew auction house for a proper sale would it actually make Ronin serious money.
Maschur estimated it would easily fetch tens of billions—maybe even over a hundred billion Jenny.
Kurapika and Neon both disagreed. A hundred billion wasn't nearly enough.
The golden throne's value was enormous. Attach the right backstory and that number could skyrocket.
And everyone knew the throne had been sitting directly above an entire ancient underground city.
"Benket and his people won't just let this go," Kurapika said. "They know exactly how valuable that throne is. If they run to the Etoria royal family, we could end up with a lot of unnecessary trouble."
"Yeah," Ronin answered. "Then we'll run a classic shell game for the royals to watch."
With his current strength he could personally wipe the entire Etoria royal family off the map if he wanted. He just wouldn't.
Even if he used Shadow Clones to do the dirty work, there was still a real risk of being traced.
This world was full of talented people, and there was no way to know what kind of ridiculous Nen abilities some of them might be packing.
So one of Ronin's hard rules was simple: never do anything that, if exposed, would make the entire world his enemy… unless it was absolutely necessary.
And the stronger he got, the more strictly he enforced that rule on himself.
He had to keep one fact burned into his mind at all times.
He still wasn't strong enough to be invincible.