Chapter 100: Tennis
Clearing the enemies one by one was too slow.
Ronin had integrated the Sharingan into his default state, making Ninjutsu activation as natural as breathing.
As he suppressed his aura and fully converted it into Chakra, dozens of Chakra threads shot from his fingertips. They arced through the air like invisible spiders, latching onto the advancing private militia.
Puppet Performance: Skillful Achievement with a Human Body.
This technique, which Ronin used to control Owl, now showcased its terrifying scale.
Gunfire erupted across the estate grounds, but it wasn't directed at Ronin. The private soldiers, now with Chakra threads digging into their nerve endings, spun around and opened fire on their own comrades.
A chaotic melee ensued.
Ronin's fingers danced. Even when the living puppets were shot and killed, he maintained control over their corpses, forcing them to keep firing until their clips were dry.
The militia went from confident to broken in seconds. Seeing their brothers-in-arms' corpses rising and shooting at them, while the two intruders walked calmly through the crossfire as if it were a spring stroll, shattered their sanity.
No one fled. Part of the group charged Ronin in a suicidal frenzy, ignoring the bullets from the corpses. Another part dropped their weapons, falling to their knees in shock, waiting for death.
The chargers became new puppets. The kneelers were ignored by Ronin.
He had no interest in executing the broken. But Shizuku didn't share his sentiment. As she followed behind Ronin, she systematically ended the stragglers.
By the time they reached the main villa, nearly a hundred private soldiers lay dead.
No bodies remained. No bloodstains. No discarded rifles. Blinky had inhaled everything.
It was as if an infinite storage dimension existed within the vacuum's maw.
Without slowing down, Ronin kicked open the villa's massive double doors.
The interior was eerily silent. Either the staff had hidden themselves upon hearing the slaughter outside, or they had already been evacuated.
Ronin hadn't invested much in his En; it only spanned a radius of about twenty meters. It wasn't enough to cover the entire mansion, but as they moved deeper, several signatures entered his range.
Two people in a nearby room possessed auras significantly stronger than normal humans.
Moreover, Ronin sensed a third, faint signature in the basement. It was weak—the aura of someone on the brink of death.
Ronin stopped. "Is your father dead yet?"
"I don't know," Shizuku replied, her expression remaining flat despite the blunt question.
"Go check the basement. It might be him," Ronin said. It was an intuition—the gut feeling of an Enhancer, which was often more accurate than calculation.
Shizuku hesitated for a heartbeat. "Okay."
As she turned toward the stairs, Ronin warned, "Be careful."
The moment the words left his lips, a hole exploded in a nearby door.
A tennis ball shrieked through the air, aiming for the back of Shizuku's head.
Shizuku spun instantly. Blinky appeared in her hands. She didn't trigger the suction; she gripped the vacuum's nozzle like a tennis racket and swung.
Thwack!
The ball was deflected. But in that same instant, a digital number materialized above Shizuku's head: 0.
It was a construct of pure Nen.
Ronin looked down. White lines were drawn on the floorboards. Looking through the shattered door into the next room, the lines connected into a perfect representation of a Tennis Court.
A high chair and a long net materialized in the doorway.
Inside the room stood a man nearly two meters tall. He was muscular, wearing a tennis cap, shorts, and a polo shirt, and he gripped a professional racket.
His eyes were sharp and predatory, locked onto Shizuku.
Spence.
Beside him stood another man in a formal butler's suit, his hair groomed to perfection, wearing white gloves.
His gaze was fixed entirely on Ronin.
Ronin's warning hadn't been about these two; he had sensed a trap in the basement. He hadn't expected the ambush to start in the hallway.
"Spence!" Shizuku called out his name as she recognized him.
"Your opponent is me," the Butler interjected, stepping forward to block Ronin's line of sight to Spence.
Ronin noticed the Butler's position. He was standing close to the only "high chair" in the court.
Court, score, high chair...
Ronin processed the information. In the logic of this Nen ability, that chair represented the Umpire.
In a tennis match, the Umpire had the final word. If they were the players, were Ronin and the Butler the ball boys?
Ball boys retrieved balls, mopped the floor, and provided towels. But the Umpire held the authority.
Do I really need to follow his rules?
Ronin flicked his wrist. A handful of coins appeared. With his right hand, he fired a coin at Spence. With his left, he aimed at the Butler.
The moment the coin entered the "court," Spence swung his racket. The metal coin transformed mid-air into a yellow tennis ball. The racket connected, and the ball streaked back at Shizuku with even greater velocity.
On the other side, the Butler sidestepped the coin with practiced grace and dropped into a martial arts stance.
Shizuku was hyper-focused. Every movement inside the court was laid bare to her.
The transformation of the coin to a ball was strange, but manageable. She swung Blinky again, intending to smash it back.
But mid-flight, the ball reverted to a heavy metal coin.
The sudden shift in mass and momentum almost caught her off guard. Shizuku felt the immense aura attached to the coin. She jerked Blinky aside, letting the coin miss.
The coin flew out of the boundaries. The number above Shizuku's head flickered, changing from 0 to 15.
Spence didn't wait. He pulled an object from his pocket—a fragmentation grenade.
He tossed it into the air and swung.
Mid-swing, the grenade transformed into a tennis ball. The moment it flew toward Shizuku, it reverted to a live grenade.
"Blinky, inhale and fire back," Shizuku commanded softly.
She triggered the suction. The grenade was swallowed instantly. A millisecond later, the vacuum reversed.
The grenade shot out of the nozzle like a cannonball, hurtling straight for Spence's face!
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