One of the figures looked like a lion. The other leaned more toward a monkey.
The moment they appeared, both dropped to one knee beside the green Ant King.
"You're strong." The Ant King's gaze locked straight onto Ronin. He didn't spare a single glance for the mother who had just burned to death.
Susanoo faded away.
Ronin carefully read the aura radiating from the Ant King and felt a flicker of relief. The creature's power was real, but it was limited—nowhere near the level that would force him to back off.
He didn't know exactly why the Ant King felt this way.
But as his eyes moved from the spot where the Queen had vanished to the rest of the cave, an idea clicked into place. He started linking every piece of information he had gathered so far.
The Queen had given him the most important clue.
The Kurta Clan hadn't been running trials all these years. They had been sealing this cave to keep the Chimera Ants' power in check.
That arrangement had broken down several hundred years ago.
Records pulled from the ruins showed the Kurta Clan had been completely wiped out around that time. The exact cause was still unknown, but the vortex distortion that twisted everything here was the most likely culprit.
What Ronin did know was that once the Kurta were gone, the Chimera Ants trapped in this cave finally got room to breathe again.
That was when tomb robbers found the ruins and forced their way inside.
As more humans poured in to explore, they eventually discovered the central passage leading straight into this underground space.
One of the earlier expedition teams had chosen to enter this area and pushed into the cave itself.
Ronin couldn't say for sure whether that team had run into resistance on the way in, but once they reached the cave, they had handed the Chimera Ants their first real chance to learn Nen.
That was the turning point that allowed an Ant King and Royal Guard Ants to be born.
The team had probably rushed things. The genes available for absorption were too few, so the Ants' potential had never fully developed.
The situation down here was nothing like what happened in NGL.
The Chimera Ants that had crossed into the NGL Autonomous Region from the outer sea had faced zero real threats. Food was everywhere. Countless species were ripe for the taking. The Queen had pushed her feeding and reproduction traits to the absolute limit.
The blending of genes from so many different creatures had created a true monster—Meruem.
But the Chimera Ants living in this cave had only a handful of species they could draw genes from. You could count them on your fingers.
Add in the presence of human explorers and the unknown history of the Kurta Clan, and the smartest move for the Ants was to birth a powerful King as fast as possible to flip the situation.
If you lined up the timelines, the spider uprising below matched up almost perfectly with the moment the Queen in this cave had started eating human explorers.
That left only one thing that still didn't make sense.
Why had the Kurta ancestors chosen to seal the Chimera Ants instead of wiping them out completely?
Ronin refused to believe that the same ancestors powerful enough to trap the Ants here had lacked the strength to kill creatures that hadn't even awakened Nen yet.
They must have had a reason.
What was that reason?
Ronin's gaze left the Ant King and settled on the three most important things in the cave.
First: the throne the Queen had occupied.
Second: the two towering, still-living ancient trees behind the throne—the ones that gave birth to monsters.
Third: the wide crack behind those trees that connected straight down into the underground city.
He still didn't know what the Kurta ancestors had been trying to achieve. But he knew one thing for certain.
To understand any of it, he had to kill the three Chimera Ants standing in front of him.
The situation had changed.
Before the ruins were opened, the Chimera Ants could only hunt the spiders that kept flooding into the cave. Even with their powerful feeding and reproduction traits, they were trapped.
Once humans reached the cave, everything shifted.
The moment they gained Nen, stronger Ants were born. For the first time, the Ants saw a real chance to break out.
The old methods of containment no longer worked.
Extermination was the only option left.
Even if wiping them out created new problems, those were problems for later.
Footsteps echoed from behind.
Benket and the rest of his team had finally caught up. The sight of the golden throne made every one of them light up.
Even if they only dragged that throne out of the cave, the risk of coming down here would have been worth it.
The two living giant trees behind it were worth even more.
The only real problem was the three powerful figures standing in the middle of the cavern.
Could they win?
Benket had his doubts. None of those three felt weaker than the giant snake they had fought outside.
His eyes drifted to Ronin.
If they worked together—if his people kept the guards busy—could Ronin finish all three the same way he had taken down the snake?
The thought had barely formed when Ronin spoke.
"We cooperate for now. I'll take the Ant King. You handle the Royal Guards. Until these ants are dead, the spiders count as allies."
Ronin laid out the situation fast and clear. At the same time he locked his gaze and his aura completely onto the Ant King.
The newborn King wasn't some mindless creature.
He had woken up inside the Queen's body a full day earlier. The only reason he hadn't crawled out sooner was because she kept feeding him constant energy.
When that special defensive barrier broke, the Ant King felt the danger immediately.
He chose to abandon the Queen and face the intruders in his complete form.
The enemy was strong.
Those black flames in particular had made him taste real fear.
Now the same enemy had fixed his full attention on him. It was a clear challenge.
Pride wouldn't let him ignore it.
Energy gathered in his fist on pure instinct. The next instant the Ant King vanished from where he stood.
Earth rose from the ground to form a barrier.
It shattered in the same breath. But the black flames of Amaterasu were already waiting on the other side.
At the same moment, heavy stone condensed around Ronin's arm. Boosted by the Added Weight Rock Technique, his fist drove straight into the flames.
The fire began to shrink—then stopped.
Amenotokotachi had reinforced the space.
The Ant King never appeared inside the locked area. Instead he retreated and hurled a massive sphere of aura straight at Ronin's position.