Black Nen began surfacing over the monkey's ruined corpse.
Everything was exactly as Ronin had expected. And by this point, the four shadow clones he had split off earlier finally couldn't hold on anymore and completely dispersed.
No Nen returned to Ronin. At the same time, with the Ant King dead, Ronin's Strength of a Hundred Seal had already returned to its sealed state.
But more than half of the chakra inside his body still remained. In his view, that was enough to handle what came next.
The shadow clones dispersing also meant that the Four Violet Flames Formation had lost the chakra maintaining it. The flames burning on the monkey's body quickly went out, and the purple barrier shattered with a crash into countless specks of light.
The post-mortem Nen began surging rapidly.
The others had just been marveling at Ronin's strength after seeing the monkey Chimera Ant burn to death against the purple barrier, only to suddenly see the monkey's corpse slowly climb up from the ground.
When it had been alive, the monkey had still been used to standing on two legs. But now, it had completely taken on a beast-like posture, standing on all fours.
Its burned, deformed, terrifying monkey face bared its teeth.
Its entire body was wrapped in pitch-black Nen, and a deep malice and killing intent erupted from it. In the very next second, its figure vanished from where it stood.
Before anyone could think, an explosion-like roar rang out nearby.
Ronin had moved even faster. The instant the dead monkey closed in, he leapt up and smashed his fist directly into the monkey corpse wrapped in post-mortem Nen.
There was an uncrossable gap in strength between the two sides.
The instant the dead monkey's corpse was smashed into the ground, that thought appeared in everyone's mind.
The Sharingan's powerful insight allowed Ronin to see every movement the dead monkey made with ease.
Even though post-mortem Nen had made it stronger than it had been while alive, its speed still wasn't enough to pressure Ronin.
As a pure Enhancer, Ronin unleashed the purest form of Enhancement power at that moment.
Using a method of force generation beyond Big Bang Impact, he gathered Nen around his fist, then supplemented it with the overwhelming effect of Cherry Blossom Impact. With both stacked together, that punch erupted with one hundred and fifty percent of Ronin's power.
The post-mortem Nen hadn't given the monkey any special Nen ability. It had only granted it powerful physical combat ability.
To Ronin, that was no different from throwing itself straight into the barrel of his gun.
As expected, insufficient growth didn't only show on the weakened Ant King. It also showed on the comparatively weaker Royal Guard ants.
The Four Symbols Seal spread directly from the hand Ronin had used to touch the dead monkey's body, crawling over the dead monkey itself.
Under the effect of the sealing technique, the pitch-black Nen began retracting into the monkey's body at a visible speed.
The dead monkey's body trembled slightly.
That was the effect of it struggling with all its strength.
But that was all.
Ronin's large hand was like a pair of iron tongs, pinning it directly into the ground.
By the time the sealing technique was fully completed, the dead monkey lay motionless in the cracked earth.
Sealing techniques really did work against post-mortem Nen.
Then the next topic to discuss was this: after releasing the post-mortem Nen, could he control the dead monkey through puppet strings?
And also, after sealing the post-mortem Nen, how should he preserve the monkey's corpse?
Ronin casually pulled out the Fun Fun Cloth. Under everyone's stunned and shocked gazes, he directly stored away both the dead monkey's corpse and the shattered corpse of the Ant King.
In truth, there was one thing he had always been curious about.
Was there really only one Chimera Ant Queen in this cavern?
The reason that thought had formed was entirely because of the Chimera Ants that appeared in NGL.
Had that Chimera Ant really come from outside the range of Lake Mobius and just happened to drift all the way to NGL by chance?
Looking at this cavern, Ronin was skeptical.
Without his appearance, how would the mercenary group have dealt with the Chimera Ants here?
After all, according to the normal course of events, the Chimera Ants here didn't seem to have caused any major disturbance. At most, perhaps Vanessa would have fallen behind here.
And that was already the result of Ronin imagining the worst-case scenario.
In other words, Ronin had a suspicion.
He suspected that the Chimera Ant in NGL had been deliberately released there by someone under Beyond's orders.
And the source from which they had obtained the Chimera Ants was here—the Mahawi ruins.
Ronin's gaze shifted toward the cliff behind the giant trees.
But now, with all three Chimera Ants wiped out, the spiders on the cliff behind the giant trees began letting out piercing screeches.
The first thing Benkert thought of was the golden throne.
Seeing Ronin's gaze turn toward the giant trees, he gritted his teeth and directly led his people charging toward the throne.
Ronin only swept him a glance and didn't pay him much attention.
Instead, his focus fell more on the two giant trees. Because amid the spiders' screeches, fruits finally began falling from the trees.
And from the fruit that landed on the ground, a scorpion-like monster struggled out.
It was exactly the same kind of giant scorpion Ronin's group had encountered after entering the central passage, only this newly born scorpion was smaller.
But the instant it crawled out of the egg, it instinctively moved toward the spider corpse near it.
That spider corpse had been caught in the earlier battle.
After approaching the corpse, the scorpion quickly began feeding.
Meanwhile, at the cliffside, as the scorpion fed, a huge number of spiders surged out. These spiders completely ignored the two giant trees. Their eight compound eyes instantly locked onto the scorpion and Ronin's group.
Especially the people approaching the golden throne—they became the spiders' main focus.
Warning screeches echoed through the entire space as the spiders spread their long legs and charged up the cliff.
Benkert and the others had already reached the golden throne. With clear division of labor, they began trying to dismantle the throne from the ground, but they quickly discovered that the throne seemed to be welded into place.
When they dug slightly around the throne, they found that the ground was as hard as steel.
Even when a Nen user reinforced a shovel, striking down with it only produced the clang of metal against metal.
Something was wrong.
At that moment, everyone realized the throne was far from ordinary.
But the spiders had already closed in.
Near Ronin, Mascher and Vanessa had already gathered.
The two of them likewise paid little attention to the golden throne. In fact, the three of them, now close together, tacitly chose to run toward the giant trees.
Benkert naturally saw where Ronin's group was heading.
He was curious about the giant trees too, but in his view, the value of those trees lay more in research than in price.
The extraordinary nature of the golden throne made him choose to take the risk.
Several team members who had not acted much earlier stepped forward again from behind him. And the ability they used was precisely the off-road vehicle that had helped the team cross the flying-ant attack zone earlier.
At the same time, Colin and several others who had been responsible for combat also took the initiative to move up, blocking the spider swarm's assault.