While Benkt's team was busy fighting off the spiders and trying to carry away the golden throne, Ronin and the other two had already reached the base of the giant tree.
Once they got close, they could see a deep pit behind the roots of the great tree. Inside the pit were spider corpses.
But every corpse was mangled and broken.
It felt as if someone had deliberately thrown the spiders down into the pit, and the pit itself was like a grinder, constantly breaking down and consuming anything tossed into it.
For some reason, there wasn't a single spider near this place.
It was as if the spiders were afraid of the giant tree. But the tree wasn't alive. Even though an enormous amount of life energy, so vast it seemed ready to overflow, was visibly present within it, there was no possibility of the tree actually moving.
But the moment that thought appeared, a wave of danger made every hair on the bodies of Ronin and the other two stand on end.
Following that sense of danger, they looked up and saw a pair of massive eyes.
Vertical pupils.
They belonged to an enormous snake completely hidden on the giant tree, a snake somewhat similar to the one Ronin had killed outside the cave earlier.
Its scales were brownish gray, which was one of the reasons Ronin's group hadn't noticed it until they were already close to the tree.
The other reason was that none of them could sense even the slightest trace of Nen from the snake. In other words, it was completely in a state of Zetsu.
That was the most convenient state for launching a sneak attack.
Yet the giant snake hadn't attacked the instant Ronin's group approached. Instead, it seemed to deliberately make noise so they would discover it. It simply hung high on the tree, coldly staring down at the three people below.
Ronin's gaze swept over the snake's body, but he didn't find any sign that it was related to the Chimera Ants.
Could this snake not be a Chimera Ant?
Especially when he looked carefully, he could see that this snake was vastly different from the giant snake that had tried to stop them before.
Maybe...
Ronin shifted his gaze to another giant tree nearby, but he didn't find another snake on it.
"Go to the other tree," Ronin decided immediately.
Mascher and Vanessa had no objections. That wasn't only because Ronin had earned their trust with his overwhelming strength, but also because his judgment matched their own thoughts.
Perhaps there wasn't only one giant snake in this cave.
It was just that the other one had already entered the ant queen's stomach, and it was the genes of that other snake that had given birth to the Chimera Ant giant snake guarding the cave.
The snake in the tree kept watching their movements.
When it saw the three of them climb onto the other giant tree, it still didn't take any action. It simply observed them quietly with those vertical pupils.
"Do you think that thing is intelligent?" Mascher couldn't help asking as he stared at those lively snake eyes.
"No idea," Vanessa answered absentmindedly.
Her eyes were fixed on the tree, searching for something. After spotting certain traces on it, the guess in her heart became more and more certain.
Ronin had the same thought as Mascher.
But what he wanted to know even more was the relationship between the giant snake and the giant tree. Also, was the snake another kind of monster afraid of fire?
Ronin quickly rejected that idea himself.
The giant snake probably wasn't afraid of flames.
Otherwise, its genes likely wouldn't have been used by the ant queen to create a new Chimera Ant.
After all, judging from the current situation, the Chimera Ants did not seem to have the ability to extract the genes of those monsters born from the giant tree.
After successfully climbing the tree, the three of them directly shook off the spiders chasing them.
But as more and more spiders appeared in the cave from the cliffside, the area around the giant tree also became packed with spiders.
They looked restless, yet at the same time, they seemed afraid of something and didn't dare cross that line.
During this process, however, more and more eggs began falling from the giant tree to the ground.
And from each egg, a fire-fearing monster was born. These newly emerged monsters didn't care what the spiders were afraid of. By instinct, they threw themselves at the nearest spiders.
It was unclear whether there was some kind of natural counter at work.
Even newly born fire-fearing monsters could suppress the spiders, even tearing flesh from their bodies.
But that act seemed to provoke the spiders. Their resistance became even fiercer, and some of the newly born fire-fearing monsters were not nearly as tough as imagined. Under the spiders' counterattacks, they died quickly.
And once those fire-fearing monsters died, the nearby spiders pounced on the corpses like mad.
The scene beneath the tree soon became bloody and brutal.
More and more monsters that had fallen from the tree were killed by the increasingly ferocious spiders. This also seemed to embolden the spiders, and many of them began creeping closer to the giant tree.
But just then, the giant snake on the tree suddenly flicked its tail.
It only lashed its tail once at incredible speed, yet the spiders approaching the tree fell in swaths.
And every fallen spider had a sharp slash mark across its body.
These spiders had extremely tough hides, yet that single tail swipe from the giant snake had cut them straight in two.
At that same instant, Ronin's Sharingan trembled slightly.
Because the moment that attack erupted, he sensed the enormous aura hidden inside the giant snake.
In Ronin's perception, that aura was at least twice his own.
It was even stronger than the ant king from before.
But that didn't make sense.
If the giant snake was that powerful, then how had the Chimera Ants killed the snake that might have once existed on the other giant tree and obtained its genes?
Or were their assumptions wrong?
No, that didn't fit either. The tree they were on really did show traces of giant snake activity, and those traces were different from the ones on the other tree.
Could it be that the snake on their tree had been weaker, giving the Chimera Ants a chance to kill it?
He couldn't figure it out. But after the giant snake's strike, the nearby fire-fearing monsters that had fallen from the tree now had plenty of food.
And as that food entered their stomachs, those fire-fearing monsters began growing at a shocking speed.
During this process, however, Ronin heard screams.
They came from the area around the golden throne. Benkt's team was finally beginning to suffer casualties under the attacks of countless spiders.
Even so, during that time, the appearance of the off-road vehicle allowed Benkt and the others to successfully pull the throne out of the ground.
Ronin didn't know what kind of ability they had used, but that throne, which clearly looked far from light, was actually lifted over one person's head with ease.
The off-road vehicle charged back into the spider swarm, while the person carrying the golden throne began sprinting madly in the direction they had come from, covered by the smoke bombs Benkt threw out.
At the same time, with the off-road vehicle joining the battlefield, the people who had gradually begun suffering casualties under Colin's leadership finally got a chance to breathe.
They began retreating in an orderly fashion, looking nothing like a hastily assembled team.
~~~
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