While Benket's squad fought desperately to hold back the spiders and figure out how to drag the golden throne away, Ronin's group had already reached the base of the giant trees.
Up close, they could see a deep pit behind the massive roots. Spider corpses lay inside, but every single one was mangled and broken. It looked like someone had deliberately dumped the spiders into the pit, and the hole itself worked like a living grinder, steadily tearing apart and consuming whatever fell in.
Strangely, not a single spider came near this spot.
It was as if the spiders feared the giant tree. Yet the tree wasn't alive. Even though enormous life energy visibly overflowed from it, the tree showed no movement, no awareness, nothing.
The moment that thought formed, a cold spike of danger hit all three of them at once. The hairs on the backs of their necks stood straight up.
Following the feeling, they looked up.
A pair of massive eyes stared down at them.
Vertical pupils.
Completely hidden among the branches of the giant tree sat a huge snake, its vertical pupils fixed on the three below. It looked similar to the giant snake Ronin had killed outside the cave earlier.
Its scales were a dull brownish-gray, which explained why they hadn't spotted it until they got this close. More importantly, none of them could sense even the slightest trace of aura from its body. It was in a full Zetsu state—the perfect condition for an ambush.
Yet the snake hadn't attacked the second they approached. Instead, it seemed to have deliberately made some noise to alert them. Now it simply hung high in the tree, watching them with cold, unblinking eyes.
Ronin swept his gaze over the snake's body but found no signs of Chimera Ant involvement.
Was this snake not a Chimera Ant at all?
Up close, its appearance was clearly different from the giant snake that had blocked their path earlier.
Maybe…
Ronin glanced toward the second giant tree nearby, but no other snake showed itself there.
"We're checking the other tree," Ronin decided on the spot.
Maschur and Vanessa didn't argue. Ronin had earned their trust with raw power, and his instincts matched their own.
There might be more than one giant snake in this cavern.
The second one had probably already been eaten by the Ant Queen. Its genes had been used to birth the Chimera Ant guardian snake that had protected the cave entrance.
The snake in the branches kept watching them.
When the three climbed onto the second giant tree, it made no move to stop them. It simply continued observing with those sharp, intelligent vertical pupils.
"You think that thing's actually smart?" Maschur asked, staring at the alert snake eyes.
"No clue," Vanessa answered, distracted.
Her gaze kept scanning the tree. After spotting certain marks on the bark, her suspicions only grew stronger.
Ronin shared the same thoughts as Maschur.
But he was more curious about the relationship between the giant snake and the giant tree. Was the snake also one of those wood-born monsters that burned so easily?
He quickly dismissed the idea. The snake probably wasn't vulnerable to fire.
Otherwise the Ant Queen wouldn't have used its genes to create a new Chimera Ant. From everything they'd seen, the Chimera Ants here couldn't extract genes from the wood-born monsters spawned by these giant trees.
The three of them reached the tree safely and escaped the spiders' pursuit.
But more and more spiders kept pouring into the cavern from the cliff area. Soon the space around the giant trees was surrounded. The spiders shifted restlessly, like they wanted to attack but were too afraid to cross some invisible boundary.
At the same time, more and more eggs began dropping from the giant tree above.
Each egg split open and released one of the wood-born monsters. The newborns didn't care what the spiders feared. They immediately lunged at the nearest spider on instinct.
Some kind of natural counter clearly existed between them.
Even freshly hatched, the wood-born monsters could overpower the spiders, tearing chunks of flesh from their bodies.
The spiders fought back harder. The newborn monsters weren't as tough as they looked. Many died quickly under the spiders' counterattack.
Whenever one of the wood-born monsters fell, the nearby spiders went into a frenzy and swarmed the corpse.
The scene beneath the tree turned into a bloody slaughter in seconds.
More and more monsters dropping from the branches were cut down by the now-aggressive spiders. The kills seemed to embolden the spiders further. Several began creeping closer to the giant tree itself.
At that exact moment, the giant snake in the tree whipped its tail.
It was only one incredibly fast lash, but every spider near the tree collapsed in waves. Each fallen spider bore clean, razor-sharp slash wounds across its body.
These thick-skinned spiders had been sliced clean in half by the snake's tail.
In that instant, Ronin's Sharingan trembled.
Because in the moment the attack erupted, he sensed the enormous aura hidden inside the snake's body.
At least twice as much aura as his own.
Even greater than the Ant King they had faced before.
But that didn't make sense.
If the snake was this powerful, how had the Chimera Ants managed to kill the one that had supposedly been on the other tree and steal its genes?
Or had their assumption been wrong from the start?
No. The tree they were standing on clearly showed signs of the snake's presence, and those signs were different from the other tree.
Maybe the snake on this tree had been weaker. That was the only reason the Chimera Ants had managed to kill it.
Ronin couldn't figure it out. But after the snake's strike, the wood-born monsters that had dropped nearby suddenly had plenty of food.
As they devoured the corpses, the monsters began growing at an astonishing rate.
During the chaos, Ronin heard screams.
They came from the direction of the golden throne. Benket's squad had finally started taking real casualties under the endless spider assault.
But the conjured off-road vehicle gave Benket's team the opening they needed. They managed to pry the throne free from the ground.
Whatever ability they used, one person easily lifted the heavy throne over their head.
The vehicle charged straight into the spider swarm in reverse. The person carrying the golden throne sprinted back the way they had come, covered by the smoke grenades Benket threw.
At the same time, the vehicle's arrival gave Colin and his fighters—who had been steadily losing people—a chance to breathe.
They began a disciplined, organized retreat. It didn't look like a hastily thrown-together group at all.