Muir's next words confirmed Ronin's guess had been right on the mark.
"Over a hundred years ago, when electricity first started being used in everyday life, some people already suspected that the energy behind ancient technology was electrical power.
It wasn't officially proven until 1950. That was when V5 sent teams into the Dark Continent and discovered a special kind of stone.
All you had to do was drop that stone into water and it would generate enormous amounts of electricity. When the data came back, researchers compared it to old records found in ruins and realized it matched descriptions of that exact stone.
But in all the years since, no one has ever found another sample of what they named the unmanned stone. It's like those special stones finished discharging over the last thousand years and turned back into ordinary rock."
Muir watched the surprise in Ronin's eyes behind the mask and looked quietly satisfied.
Ronin stayed silent, running the timeline in his head.
From what he knew, humanity had discovered and started using electricity around the year 1800. That was also when V5 had signed their treaty.
He remembered this from the manga—the treaty hadn't been about ruins or forbidden zones. It had been about the Dark Continent.
Starting in 1800, V5 had banned all exploration of the Dark Continent.
That same year, the Kurta Clan had gone into hiding, because that was when the first hunters targeting their Scarlet Eyes had appeared.
During that period V5 had also locked down more than seventy percent of the ruins and secret realms inside Lake Mobius, turning them into restricted zones that ordinary people could rarely enter.
Professional Hunters still kept the right to apply for exploration permits in most of those places.
The next hundred-plus years had been a time of rapid technological progress.
But even while publicly enforcing the Dark Continent Non-Interference Treaty, V5 had secretly launched over a hundred expeditions into the Dark Continent. The Navigation Bureau still had the records.
The most recent official one had been in 1950, when each of the five great nations sent a team.
That was the first time official records showed living people returning from the Dark Continent. It was also during that expedition that five special existences and five calamitous existences had been discovered.
Among the five special existences was the unmanned stone Muir had just mentioned.
Once Ronin had the timeline straight, he understood exactly what Muir was doing.
This was a test.
Muir had probably already accepted his combat strength. But whether Ronin could become a real partner for an expedition into the Dark Continent would depend on whether he showed ambition—or certain other qualities.
Before Muir could keep talking, the team finished resting. Whatever came next was probably going to be a serious fight.
What they were really looking for were any remaining products from the Dark Continent that might still be hidden inside this ancient city.
The building's main doors had long since shattered. Stepping over broken glass, Ronin and the others felt the city's dead silence close in around them.
The city itself was completely still.
What made their skin crawl was the feeling that, the moment they left the protection of the building, countless unseen eyes had locked onto them.
They had no city map. Exploration would come down to instinct and professional knowledge.
Ronin had the instinct. The professional knowledge? Not so much.
But Muir had come prepared. The person he was really counting on was Vanessa, who stayed glued to Maschur's side.
Vanessa could read the markings on buildings—and even their architectural style—to roughly figure out what each structure had been used for. She would sketch quick maps on the spot and analyze the layout to identify the most promising areas to search.
Monsters still lunged out of buildings from time to time, but the golem's Gatling gun shredded them before they could become a real threat.
Even so, Muir stayed on high alert the entire time, which only made Ronin more cautious.
Something dangerous was probably still lurking in this mostly silent city.
Clearing the entire place wasn't something they could finish in a day or two.
With only twelve people in the squad, they rotated rest periods according to their mechanical watches.
Searching the interiors of the skyscrapers was the real headache.
Whatever food chain existed down here, those strange velociraptor-like monsters kept appearing in swarms, like rats pouring out of a sewer.
"What the hell do these things even eat?" Ronin muttered.
The broken monster corpses gave off a sharp, metallic blood smell. But whenever they passed the same spots the next day, the bodies had already dried out into brittle, paper-thin husks that crumbled in the wind.
No one had an answer.
"Do we need to sweep every building top to bottom?" Maschur asked Muir. "Especially the underground levels."
He was curious about the monsters too. They felt almost like cloned copies—mindless, emotionless, attacking anything that entered their territory with mechanical persistence.
Muir hesitated.
They had already tried pushing into the underground sections earlier. The deeper they went, the more monsters appeared. The velociraptor types eventually gave way to heavily armored, beast-like creatures with powerful claws.
The Gatling could still rip the lighter monsters apart, but its Nen bullets just glanced off the armored ones without punching through fast enough to drop them.
That meant if they wanted to go deeper, the golem would have to switch from modern firearms to its war hammer or heavy sword. The whole team's stamina drain would spike hard.
"What about a solo infiltration?" Ronin suggested.
The golem was built for set-piece battles and slow, crushing advances. For real exploration, they needed people who could move fast and quiet.
Muir immediately understood. His gaze shifted to Vanessa.
"I can do it," Vanessa said, stepping forward instead of hiding this time.
If they wanted real results, the underground levels had to be checked.
"I'll go with her," Ronin volunteered.
Muir looked uncertain.
He knew Vanessa's abilities inside and out. Adding Ronin might actually slow her down or turn him into a liability.
He didn't doubt Ronin's raw power. After watching him fight, Muir had a decent read on his strengths.
In his eyes, Ronin excelled at direct, head-on confrontations. A solo stealth run? Ronin could probably handle that.
But this wasn't a straight fight.
This was infiltration and reconnaissance.