Chapter 911
2-in-1 Chapter
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Ron stood silently.
Above the spiderweb lay a girl's corpse—Mona, the same girl he had spoken with just a few days earlier.
He had seen countless people die. But this felt different. A girl who, just days ago, had chatted with him about her dreams and her hopes of moving forward alongside her companions… now lay lifeless before him.
His mood soured.
He gently lifted her body from the web and looked around before choosing a quiet, hidden corner.
There, he dug a deep pit and buried her inside.
He found a stone and set it atop the grave.
Gathering aura at his fingertip, he used it like a pen.
With focused strokes, he inscribed her name: Mona.
Ron stared at the makeshift gravestone for a moment in silence.
To him, the Abyss's creatures weren't dangerous. None of the creatures here could pose a real threat—not to someone like him. He could move through its layers freely, observe its patterns, and dismantle its predators. But the same couldn't be said for the people who lived near its edge, or for those who came here chasing vague hopes of discovery, glory, or escape.
The weak had no chance.
They wandered into this world with too much faith and too little strength. Some, like Mona, believed in companionship. Others believed in themselves. All of them were swallowed.
Here, even breathing too deeply in the wrong place could mean death.
He wasn't angry. He wasn't even grieving. But as he stood by the grave, he felt a quiet kind of frustration—not toward Mona, not toward the Abyss, but toward how inevitable it all was.
This world would never allow weak people to chase beautiful things for long.
He turned away without a word. Behind him, the stone stood alone. Ahead, the path led downward.
Ron kept walking.
.................
......
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Two days later, he descended to the second layer of the Abyss—more precisely, the underground second level.
This was the Forest of Temptation.
Despite being beneath the surface, green vegetation still thrived, nourished by shafts of filtered sunlight pouring through cracks in the ceiling above. The air was thick with moisture, and the ground was uneven, dotted with roots and hidden pits. Large fungi pulsed faintly with bioluminescence beneath the foliage.
A species called the Sky Mist Tree grew here, known for its ability to point explorers toward the Abyss's center. Its structure resembled tall grass more than a tree—slender, fibrous stalks topped with soft fronds. Each leaned subtly toward direction 157, bending in the direction of richer light.
Ron paused to observe.
In the distance, he saw glimpses of motion—creatures that stalked just out of sight, watching but not approaching. He heard faint rustling, the trickle of unseen streams, the echo of something dragging across stone.
This layer had its own rhythm.
Suddenly, a sweet, alluring scent drifted toward him.
His instincts flared.
As someone from the Zoldyck family of assassins, Ron had an innate sensitivity to poison. The moment the scent reached him, he caught the subtle wrongness in it—traces of toxin layered beneath the sweetness. Not enough to kill, but enough to dull nerves and slow reaction time.
It wouldn't affect him.
It wouldn't even affect Killua.
But its presence made one thing clear: something in this forest relied on that toxin to hunt.
"Gyo."
Ron activated it, and his perception sharpened instantly.
A flower entered his vision—vivid red, blooming slightly larger than the others around it. At first glance, it was identical to its neighbors, but Ron could see the deception. It wasn't a plant at all. It was a creature, partially buried, with only one appendage above the soil—shaped and colored like a flower to lure in prey.
He picked up a rock, flicked his wrist.
Whoosh!
The stone flew straight and struck the center of the bloom.
Shriek!
A sharp, wet screech tore through the silence.
The ground split open as a large beast erupted upward—its body thick and leathery, legs dense with muscle, and two red eyes burning in its triangular head. Its mouth was ringed with thin petal-like sensory tendrils that retracted quickly, revealing layers of jagged teeth.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It charged straight at Ron.
"Compared to the creatures on the first layer, those on the second are definitely stronger," Ron muttered as he watched it. "But still not strong enough."
A figure stepped out beside him—Uchiha Sasuke.
"Lightning Release: Chidori."
Electricity crackled down his arm.
Puchi.
Sasuke's hand pierced the creature's throat cleanly and retracted in one smooth motion.
Blood erupted from the wound, spraying in wide arcs. The beast shuddered and dropped heavily.
Boom.
Its body slammed into the ground.
Ron glanced at the creature's remains. The inner tissue near its stomach was partially exposed, revealing remnants of a small mammal—still half-digested. The creature fed opportunistically, using its floral lure to trap anything it could ambush: rodents, birds, even other insects.
He continued deeper into the forest and encountered other species.
One was an insect, roughly the size of a melon, with shell segments that unfolded like petals. Its wings buzzed faintly as it hovered above the moss. It mimicked human speech—not meaningfully, but by parroting common sounds.
A trap meant to bait explorers closer, likely toward a hive.
Another creature was a subterranean amphibian. Its skin was a slick pale green, body wide and flat like a stingray, and it waited beneath the mud until vibrations passed overhead. The moment Ron neared, its body pulsed and sludgy suction marks bloomed where limbs should be. These things didn't move to hunt—they let prey walk over them, then swallowed upward.
Ron Obesrved quietly.
Most creatures here weren't strong alone. But they had evolved to exploit fear, confusion, and deception. The forest's danger wasn't in brute force—it was in ambush, misdirection, and numbers.
He approached a narrow suspension bridge stretched over a wide gorge.
But the real threat wasn't the bridge—it was the air above it.
Hundreds of floating creatures drifted overhead, glowing faintly with pale blue bioluminescence. Ron narrowed his eyes. Their movement pattern, shape, and spacing all mirrored open-water filter feeders. They resembled airborne krill: small, passive and unthreatening.
Which made them bait.
Predators flocked to them from all sides. Larger airborne creatures—broad-winged and fast—swooped in to feed. Ron identified three distinct types just in passing. One fed exclusively on the krill. Another hunted the first, dragging them mid-air with long barbed tails.
A third hunted both.
Above the bridge was a self-contained food chain—complex and full of danger. Creatures were both prey and predator, feeding on each other in layered succession. The deeper he looked, the more he saw: the weaker were herded, the stronger waited above. Even the "safe" species had a purpose—sacrificed to sustain everything else.
He moved across the bridge.
As he advanced, the light faded. Overhead, land protruded outward, forming a wide ceiling. It blocked most of the sunlight, and the vegetation beneath it was visibly stunted, growing low and pale.
But what drew Ron's eye were the trees growing beneath the ceiling.
They grew downward.
Thick, root-like trunks reached toward the forest floor. Their leaves fanned beneath them, like a second canopy turned upside down.
He passed a wooden sign nailed to a rotting post.
It read: Inverted Forest.
Compared to the first layer, the second was clearly more complex.
For most delvers, the first and second layers were the deepest they would ever venture.
Any deeper, and the danger increased drastically.
That was why a surveillance station had been established here—on the second layer.
It was also one of Ron's destinations.
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