A large amount of Nen surged out of the man's body and poured into the javelin.
In an instant, the javelin erupted with intense light. At that same moment, it left his hand and shot forward.
The sound of it tearing through the air only rang out almost at the exact moment the javelin pierced the head of the scorpion bound by the trap.
Enhancement plus Emission.
Ronin quickly assessed the man's ability.
He used Enhancement to strengthen the javelin's piercing power and the explosive speed of its throw, while using Emission to maintain the energy on the javelin so it wouldn't weaken after leaving his body.
In other words, the man was probably an Emitter who leaned toward Enhancement.
He hadn't chosen the spatial-type development path, most likely because he wanted to use Enhancement to further increase the javelin's destructive power.
This was a Nen user who pursued extreme offensive force.
The javelin easily pierced through the giant scorpion's head, and the Nen attached to it erupted inside the scorpion's body, causing a second wave of damage.
Clearly, the man also had some skill in Manipulation. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to detonate the Nen on the javelin so precisely inside the scorpion's body.
As expected of a Nen user from the Association.
You could say he had developed his ability almost perfectly around his own traits.
It was completely based on the "mountain-shaped" training method.
Main focus: Emission.
Secondary focus: Enhancement.
Small amount of auxiliary Manipulation.
Ronin remembered him. If he wasn't mistaken, the man's name should be Colin.
The giant scorpion's vitality was incredibly tenacious. Even after its brain had been pierced through, it still struggled desperately on the ground.
But its body was still bound by the huge net, so all that struggling was pointless.
As for the tiger-like monsters that had been circling nearby earlier, the moment they heard the giant scorpion's death throes, they tucked their tails and fled.
"The beasts pouring out of this nest all carry a kind of madness," Ronin said, voicing his thoughts. "But seeing how these things still know to run away, could there be some kind of monster with a bewitching or influencing ability?"
"You mean a monster has already learned Nen?" Benkt's tone was skeptical.
If that were true, then the danger level of this nest would rise by more than just one grade.
"Hard to say. It might just be some special biological trait," Ronin said uncertainly.
But deep down, he leaned more toward the possibility that some monster had awakened Nen, even if only on an instinctive level.
After all, Nen was life energy. Humans could learn it, Chimera Ants could learn it, magical beasts could learn it—so powerful monsters might naturally awaken it by accident too.
It was just that, lacking intelligence, they might rely more on instinct when using their abilities.
But as long as they had opened their aura nodes, their threat level would rise dramatically.
Benkt naturally understood how dangerous the possibility behind Ronin's words was. So while he said nothing on the surface, the entire team became noticeably more cautious during the following exploration.
Clearly, some of them had taken Ronin's words to heart.
The giant scorpion soon died completely. Its massive corpse was actually a material of great research value.
But among the seventeen people in the group, other than Ronin, who had an ability capable of storing corpses, no one else showed such an ability trait.
And Ronin wasn't particularly interested in the giant scorpion's body.
He didn't plan to take up one of the usable slots of Owl's Fun Fun Cloth for it. Allocating Owl's Nen properly would probably be helpful for the rest of the exploration.
After the giant scorpion died, the exploration became a lot easier.
At the very least, the species that approached them no longer showed any immediate intention of attacking. Instead, they shifted into a wait-and-see attitude.
They wandered in the shadows beneath the nearby trees. When members of the team tried to approach, they bared their teeth and growled warnings. But if anyone truly attacked them, they scattered like startled birds and beasts.
The team couldn't waste a large amount of energy on these wild-beast-type monsters that seemed to be everywhere.
So they simply allowed them to follow near the group, while assigning people to monitor their movements at all times in case something unexpected happened.
The forest was enormous. The team kept moving forward, but the useful information they discovered was scarce.
The deeper they went, however, the more monsters appeared. Even those enormous giant scorpions began showing up more frequently, along with several-meter-long centipedes with countless legs.
Even while wearing a gas mask, Ronin could feel his breathing becoming smoother.
Thinking of those abnormally gigantic insects, Ronin formed a guess: the oxygen concentration in this space was higher than in the outside world.
It might even be over thirty percent.
Surviving short-term in such an environment wouldn't pose much risk. In fact, the increased oxygen concentration might even promote metabolism and blood circulation.
But long-term exposure carried the risk of oxygen poisoning.
More importantly, in an oxygen-rich environment with no birds or other natural predators, insects could easily grow to enormous sizes.
On the other hand, such an oxygen-rich environment was also extremely prone to fires. After all, on Earth, the Carboniferous Period had ended amid repeated massive fires.
It seemed quite a few people had noticed the same thing as Ronin.
"High oxygen. Enlarged insects. But some monsters aren't large," Ronin muttered to himself, feeling that this was far from simple. "Yet those monsters also show arthropod traits."
After the giant centipedes appeared, giant ants emerged next.
And these ants came in groups. They were like the guardians of this forest. The moment they appeared, a strange thudding sound began to ring out.
It seemed to be the sound of their ant legs striking the ground as they walked, but hidden within it was some kind of special rhythm.
As that rhythm appeared, the beasts that had been surrounding them nearby and refusing to leave grew more and more low, violent, and restless.
When the thudding sound reached its peak, the first beast in the pack lunged forward.
Its movement was like a burning fuse finally reaching its end.
What it triggered was a complete explosion.
The many beasts that had been circling and prowling no longer suppressed their instincts. They rushed madly toward Ronin and the others.
But Ronin's gaze passed over the beast horde and landed on the ants, which had only been walking back and forth at a distance since they appeared, never choosing to approach.
He saw Nen on those ants.
Ants.
Nen.
Intelligence.
And the unusual traits appearing on some of the monsters.
The name of a dangerous creature suddenly leapt into Ronin's mind.
Chimera Ants.
"They're Chimera Ants!"
There was a biological specialist in the team. After careful observation, just as the same answer surfaced in Ronin's mind, that person shouted the ants' name.
They really were Chimera Ants.