Chapter 239: Parasitism

After hearing both sides of the story, Asagiri and the three girls, Yuuki Asuna, Kato Megumi, and Iwanaga Kotoko, had already pieced together the general situation.

Simply put, because that male Player had been alone when the carpet turned red, he had become the target of suspicion from the four person team. That was perfectly reasonable. There were very few Players who entered a Dungeon alone. Either they possessed absolute confidence in their own strength and believed they could clear it solo, or they were so incompetent that they could not even find teammates. In either case, it naturally drew suspicion from other Players.

"If that’s the case..."

Asagiri looked at the male Player lying on the floor and said flatly,

"Take out your phone and let us confirm that you are a living Player."

The man on the ground clearly did not want to do it. After all, to a Player, a phone was practically their lifeline. But given the current situation, he had no room to refuse. He could only ask tentatively, 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"It’s in my pants pocket. Can I take it out?"

"Do it."

After getting permission, the male Player slowly and carefully reached his left hand into his pocket.

Yuuki Asuna watched the movement of his left hand with full concentration, but in the very next instant, a curved saber suddenly appeared in his right hand. His body lunged forward like a snake. Enduring the pain of Gleaming Light slicing into his back, he twisted upward with astonishing agility and swung the curved blade straight at Yuuki Asuna’s head.

Clang!

Yuuki Asuna’s reaction speed was terrifyingly fast. She instantly raised Gleaming Light and blocked the slash. Seeing that his strike had failed, the male Player immediately flicked his left hand and sent a dart flying toward Yuuki Asuna’s throat.

It was blocked by a layer of Black Particles that appeared out of nowhere.

The next second, the sharp sound of something cutting through the air rang out.

A black arrow made of ebony shot across the corridor and struck the male Player right in the center of his brow. The arrowhead and shaft sank halfway into his skull.

When the four Players in the distance saw this, they instinctively let out a breath of relief.

But Iwanaga Kotoko suddenly frowned and immediately called out,

"Violet, be careful!"

Yuuki Asuna did not know why Kotoko was warning her, but she trusted her judgment completely. Without hesitation, she retreated.

The instant she moved back, several flesh-like tentacles suddenly burst out from the chest of the male Player whose head had already been pierced by the arrow.

"Sword Skill..."

While retreating, Yuuki Asuna had already fulfilled the conditions for high speed movement and completed the Sword Skill’s charge.

"Stinger!"

Gleaming Light thrust forward, its crystal-like tip blazing with dazzling radiance as it pierced straight through the male Player’s head.

Even so, the tentacles writhing out of his chest did not stop.

His left hand even rose, aiming directly at Yuuki Asuna, who had just finished using a Sword Skill.

Seeing the dark green sphere of light forming in his palm, Asagiri still did not move. Only Iwanaga Kotoko reacted. She raised her hand and condensed Black Particles into a barrier in front of Yuuki Asuna.

Sizzle... sizzle... sizzle...

The moment the dark green orb struck the Black Particles shield, white smoke rose at once. It sounded as though the Black Particles were being corroded by concentrated acid.

"Netherworld Grip."

As Iwanaga Kotoko’s words fell, a giant pale ghost hand materialized out of thin air. Its five fingers spread wide and reached for the Player whose head had already been ruined.

His body seemed to jerk, trying to dodge, but by then a spinning battle axe had already torn through the air toward him.

Bang!!

As though the two attacks had been coordinated in advance, the Player, who had just tried to dodge the ghost hand, was smashed in the chest by the heavy axe. His body flew backward and landed squarely in the giant ghost hand’s palm.

The pale fingers instantly closed.

With a sickening grinding sound, the hand crushed him into dust.

Even so, just before the body was completely crushed, the flesh-like tentacles wriggling from his chest lashed out and twisted across the carpet a few times before shriveling up and losing all luster, as though their life force had been drained away.

The four Players in the distance who had witnessed the whole battle could not help but reveal horrified expressions.

The woman leading them looked just as shaken, but what truly shocked her most was not the strength Yuuki Asuna, Kato Megumi, and Iwanaga Kotoko had just displayed.

It was Asagiri, who had stood there from beginning to end without taking a single step.

Why had the Player in the black trench coat not moved to help his teammates?

Because he had absolute confidence in them. He had believed they could handle the parasitized Player on their own, so he had remained behind to guard against the other four.

And on the other hand, why had those three women been so comfortable leaving their backs exposed to the four suspicious Players nearby?

Because they believed that one man alone was enough to hold off all four of them if necessary.

And more importantly...

Was that really the full extent of this team’s power?

Impossible.

An elite team that still remembered to guard against other Players even in the middle of a crisis would never expose all of its strength so easily. Absolutely impossible.

The female Player thought it through carefully.

If her own team had encountered the same situation just now, they would eventually have won as well, but someone on their side would definitely have been injured. There was no way they could have resolved it so cleanly and casually.

There was no need to say it out loud. The gap in strength was obvious.

"That..."

Seeing the woman’s expression turn cautious, Asagiri simply waved a hand.

"You can leave."

"Understood. Thank you."

The woman thanked him at once, then quickly led her three teammates away. She truly had no desire to stay any longer in front of such a frightening team.

After the four of them left, the door to Room 7011 slowly opened, and Mr. Ichikawa stepped out with an ingratiating smile.

"Sorry, sorry. We didn’t come out to help just now..."

"There’s no need to apologize."

Asagiri’s tone remained flat.

"Without coordination, you would only have gotten in the way. Besides, our agreement never said you had to help in battle."

As he said this, he walked over to the dried, shriveled flesh tendrils and said softly,

"This is what appeared in the corridor when the carpet turned red."

"So the lone Player was parasitized by this thing..."

Iwanaga Kotoko poked the shriveled tendrils on the ground with the tip of her cane and frowned.

"When this thing was still outside, I could sense the strange aura it gave off. But once it was hidden inside a Player’s body, I couldn’t detect anything unusual at all. And after parasitizing a Player, it doesn’t just grant monstrous vitality. It can also use that Player’s original inventory and skills. It should even be able to control the host’s actions. Otherwise, in that situation just now, once the host realized he had been exposed, he should have tried to escape instead of attacking."

Yuuki Asuna thought about it and said tentatively,

"I remember he had been pretending the whole time. But the moment we asked him to take out his phone, he attacked. Does that mean... through the Player status shown in the eye icon APP, we can confirm whether someone is still a living Player? If they’ve been parasitized, maybe it shows they’re dead. If they haven’t, it shows the Player linked to the phone is still alive?"

"Hard to say."

Asagiri shook his head while examining the remains.

"After all, it can even use the skills and inventory of the host Player. Maybe in the system’s judgment, a parasitized Player still counts as alive, which means the APP wouldn’t help us identify them."

Yuuki Asuna looked slightly confused.

"Then if he had really taken out his phone just now, wouldn’t that have cleared his suspicion?"

"Maybe that was exactly what it wanted us to think."

Asagiri crouched down and reached into the dead Player’s pants pocket.

There was nothing there.

"Don’t forget," he said calmly, "this parasitic tendril may only be a tiny fragment of a much larger Cursed being. Its thought process isn’t that of a normal individual. It can sacrifice itself for the sake of the main body’s goals. It has no real survival instinct. There’s no phone on this corpse. It may have hidden it somewhere while fleeing just now. There’s no point wasting time searching for it. We should think about our next move."

As Mr. Ichikawa and his two teammates listened to Asagiri and the others, admiration quietly filled their hearts.

As expected, it wasn’t just their strength. There was an obvious gap in intelligence as well.

What Asagiri and the others had just analyzed wasn’t especially hard to figure out. The real difference was how fast they could gather information, organize it, and turn it into something useful.

They had completed the entire process, observation, analysis, and deduction, in less than thirty seconds.

And it wasn’t just combat. Even in reasoning, they had an extremely clear division of roles...

Wait.

Four people?

Mr. Ichikawa and his two teammates froze.

The three of them exchanged looks, all wearing slightly dazed expressions.

When had the fourth one appeared?

But when they turned their heads again to confirm, they discovered that at some point, the fourth person had disappeared without a trace, as though they had never been there at all.

What was going on?

Had they imagined it?

.....

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