69novels Page 130
Page 130
After saying that, Kato Megumi noticed that Asagiri, Yuuki Asuna, and Iwanaga Kotoko were all staring at her with strange looks, and she couldn't help but feel a little flustered.
"What, what's wrong?"
"You just..."
Kotoko Iwanaga asked tentatively.
"Is it imitating Leader?"
"Pfft..."
Asuna Yuuki couldn't hold back any longer and burst out laughing. She waved her hand at Megumi Kato, whose face was slightly flushed.
"Sorry, sorry... it's just that your usual image isn't really suited to saying these cool, high-spirited lines... hahaha, it's hilarious..."
"Sigh, Phantom."
Asagiri shook her head, looking inscrutable, and said earnestly.
"There's still a lot you need to learn in the art of looking cool and showing off."
Kato Megumi: "..."
One act of extroversion can lead to a lifetime of introversion.
She will never imitate Asagiri's cool act again.
……
Later that evening, in a large hall on the third basement level.
"Clang!"
The moment a cute girl with pigtails took a step, a sharp iron fence suddenly rose from the ground, piercing her abdomen and propelling her body to the ceiling, which was nearly four meters high.
"It hurts a little..."
Even though his abdomen was completely pierced by the sharp iron bars, Crazy Mita remained calm and composed, only staring speechlessly at Asagiri and the others who walked to the iron bars, and sighed.
"I said, although I have no problem with this, can't you switch between them? The hat-wearing girls can also clear the way, so why are you only targeting me?"
Asagiri walked up to the iron fence, reached out and bent it, creating a gap through which she could pass, and replied with a smile.
"That's why you're so hard to die. If your Persona is destroyed, it will consume my physical and mental energy."
Upon hearing this, Crazy Mita lowered her head limply, and then spoke in a flat, uncomfortably obsequious tone.
"Ah, I'm dead."
"Stop telling lame jokes and get down here now."
"Sigh, what a heartless boss."
Crazy Mita shook his head, easily snapped off the iron bars that had pierced his abdomen like toothpicks, and then floated lightly to the ground, where the wound healed rapidly.
Crazy Metta suffered a lot along the way, such as being pierced by iron fences, falling into traps full of spikes, and being shot into a hedgehog by darts that suddenly popped out from the corridor walls. When the four-person team was moving forward, she was always the one to lead the way, since it was more time-efficient than carefully checking the road ahead.
"It's an elevator..."
Seeing the old elevator blocked by a sliding iron gate not far away, Kotoko Iwanaga went up to take a look and asked about it, looking at the elevator buttons that were still lit up.
"It looks like it's still functioning. This seems to be the only way up. Shall we take it?"
"Wait a moment."
Asagiri walked slowly over, opened the iron gate, and with one hand gripping the iron railing, her body suspended in the air in the elevator shaft, she observed what was above.
"The elevator seems to be located on the second floor, which is about 30 meters away from this floor."
After checking the location of the elevator, Asagiri observed the walls inside the elevator shaft and found that it was not a normal elevator shaft. There was nothing on the outside of the walls that could be climbed or supported, and she didn't even know how the elevator worked.
"Is it some kind of strange power...?"
After careful observation, Asagiri roughly concluded that the operation of this elevator was the same as the situation the four members of the team had previously witnessed—water appearing in the metal pot and the disappearance of the human head that had been placed inside—all strange phenomena caused by a mysterious force.
Then the problem is coming.
An elevator that started operating due to a strange force...
Who would dare sit there?
Asuna Yuuki walked to Asagiri's side, observed the situation inside the elevator shaft, and came to the same conclusion as Asagiri, saying thoughtfully.
"Given our physical abilities, everyone except Necro should be able to climb up the elevator shaft by embedding their weapons in the wall. If you really want to do that, you can carry Necro up, but... entering the elevator shaft rashly and being suspended in mid-air without any leverage is just too dangerous."
"We really can't do that."
Asagiri glanced at the area below the elevator shaft and said in a calm tone.
"The bottom is about fifteen meters deep. Although we might not be seriously injured from falling from this height, don't forget that the deepest level is the source of the strangeness of the Giant Mountain Mental Hospital. If we fall to the corresponding position on that level, it probably won't be so easy for us to leave."
"So...should we still press the elevator button?"
"Press it."
Asagiri first gave an affirmative answer, then said softly.
"Be prepared for battle. Danger will always arise in this kind of situation in any horror story."
"Yes, got it."
Kotoko Iwanaga took a deep breath and then pressed the button with the upward arrow in front of her.
After a few seconds of silence, a creaking sound, like rusty metal rubbing against each other, suddenly came from the elevator shaft.
The issue is……
Asuna Yuuki gripped her rapier tightly, her face showing tension.
"That's so loud..."
At that moment, all four members of the team immediately recalled the public notification about the dungeon.
Please remain quiet and do not attract the attention of the "mentally ill person".
73
Chapter 73 "The Groom"
"Leader, shall we use my ability?"
Upon hearing Kato Megumi's question, Asagiri glanced up from the elevator shaft again and saw the elevator slowly descending while making a loud noise as it rubbed against the inner wall of the shaft. She immediately drew her conclusion.
"No, this elevator will take at least two more minutes to descend to this floor. The maximum duration of the ability you can apply to others is thirty seconds, which means... you have to use the special skill of reducing presence twelve times in a row. That's too much of a drain. You should save your physical and mental energy for the battle."
Kato Megumi nodded obediently upon hearing this.
"okay, I get it."
Kato Megumi's special skill can indeed reduce the presence of the rest of the team members, just like her, and can be released seamlessly in succession. However, there are two key issues. First, the mental patients who will be attracted by the noise will definitely search around here. Kato Megumi's skill is not true invisibility. When the target realizes that there is something strange in the surrounding area and focuses on searching, her skill is not as effective.
The second problem is that even if they are not discovered by the enemy, the four members of the squad will still have to enter the elevator eventually.
If you enter an elevator in the presence of a mentally ill person nearby, what if that person takes advantage of the situation to do something, such as cutting the elevator cable?
Therefore, it is safest to take the elevator only after ensuring that there are no dangerous factors around.
After the four members of the squad changed into their combat gear, a series of hurried footsteps sounded from the other side of the hall, accompanied by screams.
"coming."
Asuna Yuuki gripped her rapier tightly, staring intently at the metal door. A few seconds later, the door was kicked open, and out stood a tall man dressed in a white suit with a long-sleeved shirt and a vest, wearing a bow tie. His attire seemed perfectly normal, but his pupils were deathly white.
He was dragging a man along with him, presumably a player, and the screams the four members of the squad heard came from this male player.
"Oh? Are you a guest attending my wedding banquet?"
The man in the suit, with a polite demeanor, first bowed, then glanced at the four people in front of him and slowly began to speak.
"This is truly delightful... wait..."
When he saw Kotoko Iwanaga wearing a masquerade mask and a long Western-style dress, his expression turned extremely ugly.
"Women... How can there be women here!? No women are allowed here except for my bride... Hmm?"
Just as the man in the suit was roaring, his gaze swept over Chaowu standing there. His expression, which was originally extremely angry, suddenly switched to a strange obsession, and he even subconsciously loosened his grip on the male player's ankle.
"What...what a perfect person...this is the one who deserves to be my bride!"
"what?"
Hearing the man in the suit's words, Asagiri chuckled and asked in return.
“I’m wearing a mask, with only my hands and two eyes showing. How do you see what is so-called perfection? May I ask?”
To Asuna and the others' surprise, the man in the suit actually answered Asagiri's sarcastic question seriously.
"Though I can only see your eyes, they are such beautiful, such captivating eyes—deep black, as if capable of sucking away one's soul, carrying a cynical smile, yet containing an intoxicating charm—ah—I am completely captivated by your eyes—my new…"
"What are you babbling about?"
"boom!"
Asagiri instantly appeared in front of the man in the suit and delivered a straight punch to his face. The terrifying force snapped the man's neck, and his head, which had been filled with a look of ecstasy, flew off like a baseball being hit.
"It's disgusting."
Asagiri looked at the headless body of the man in the suit slowly falling to the ground and said in an undisguised tone of disgust.
"Whether it's your sexual orientation or the words you used, they make me feel extremely disgusted. You're really something else to be able to cause me such strong emotional fluctuations."
Just as Asagiri finished speaking, Iwanaga Kotoko suddenly sensed a strange fluctuation of power and immediately warned her.
"Get away!"
As soon as Kotoko Iwanaga spoke, Asagiri retreated. The next second, a new head suddenly emerged from the severed neck of the headless man in the suit, and tentacle-like things began to writhe from his body.
"Oh, my bride!"
The man in the suit, his pale pupils peering through the gaps in the dancing tentacles, stared intently at Asagiri, his face, which seemed about to burst through its skin, still held a fanatical, obsessive look.
"Once I remove the filth from you, you will become my perfect wife!"
"How dare you! You're so bold!"
Upon hearing the man in the suit's words, Kotoko Iwanaga's dark purple eyes flashed with intense killing intent. Instantly, she created three IBMs using black particles, which immediately surrounded the man.
"Beat it! Beat it to death! But don't actually kill it, torture it severely!"
Faced with the sudden appearance of three IBMs, the tentacles that emerged from the man in the suit's tattered clothes tried to resist, directly wrapping around the IBMs' bodies. The next second, the IBMs, which were originally so tough that even a volley of rifle fire could not easily destroy them, began to collapse rapidly.
"Persona, Human Asura".
After destroying three IBMs with his tentacles, the man in the suit looked at the human Shura, who resembled IBMs, walking slowly towards him. Suddenly, he burst into maniacal laughter, and a thick tentacle emerged from his abdomen, wrapping around the human Shura's body.
"Nothing can stop me from getting my bride... Hmm?"
Halfway through the conversation, the man in the suit realized that the Asura's body had not collapsed, nor had it reacted at all. It simply tore the tentacle extending from its body apart like a rag.
"This...how is this possible..."
"Hehe, bro."
Asagiri shook her head and said with a smile.
Do you even know what curse resistance is?
"What……"
The man in the suit looked incredulous and tried to turn around and run away, but his neck was grabbed by the giant hand of the demon and lifted up.
"Waiting for the elevator is so boring, this is perfect..."
Asagiri walked over slowly and met the eyes of the man in the suit. A smile appeared in his dark eyes.
"I'll torture you properly during this time..."
"Go to hell!"
Just as Asagiri was speaking, another tentacle extended from the man in the suit's chest and pierced through Asagiri's body.
"Snapped."
However, to the man in the suit's surprise, Asagiri did not dodge or flinch at the cursed tentacles it created, as if she was too lazy to avoid them at all, and let them pierce her chest.
Asagiri remained motionless, while the man in the suit's tentacles shattered into a cloud of black mist.