Chapter 248: The True Meaning of Keeping Quiet

The parasite Players said nothing in response. Several of the ranged attackers moved at once.

"Fireball!"

"Ice Cone!"

"Corrosion Ball!"

Along with the three spell type attacks came a spear hurled with sharp force and an arrow loosed from a bow. All five attacks were aimed at the same target: Asagiri.

"Persona, Human Asura."

The towering Human Asura appeared in an instant, shielding Asagiri with its massive body.

Thanks to its resistance to corrosion, the dark green sphere caused no damage at all. The fireball, Ice Cone, spear, and arrow did leave marks, but they were only surface wounds. To the Human Asura, that was no different from nothing.

At the same time, Yuuki Asuna had already made her move.

With a flicker, her figure vanished, and in the next instant she had already severed the limbs of two parasite Players. Iwanaga Kotoko, who had long since developed combat rhythm with her, immediately raised a hand and cast Netherworld Grip again, summoning a giant pale ghost hand that crushed both enemies into pieces.

"Flash."

One of the parasite Players in a dark gray cloak activated a skill and teleported nearly ten meters in an instant, appearing directly behind Iwanaga Kotoko. The dagger in their hand stabbed viciously toward the back of her head.

Bang!

Kato Megumi appeared like a ghost, swinging the Indian tomahawk in her hand and splitting the Player’s chest open in one blow. At the same time, she activated Throw, sending the body flying away.

After that brief first exchange, all four members of Asagiri’s team were unharmed, but...

"You are very strong."

The parasite Player whose chest had been split open by the tomahawk slowly stood up again. Broken ribs and even the beating heart beneath them were visible. Tiny strips of flesh wriggled around the wound, slowly stitching the horrific injury back together. Looking at Asagiri, the Player spoke in a mechanical voice devoid of all human feeling.

"Come. Become part of me."

"Heh."

Asagiri shook his head, his tone relaxed.

"But just as I thought. Even after parasitizing a Player, while your vitality becomes monstrous, the power, physical ability, and mental strength you can use are still capped by the original Player’s limits. How ridiculous..."

As he spoke, the Human Asura suddenly rushed forward with a speed completely at odds with its enormous size. It grabbed one of the parasite Players by the neck with one hand, lifted them into the air, then seized their crotch with the other and tore the body in half with brutal force.

Blood rained down.

Amid that shower of gore, Asagiri stepped on the fleshy tentacle that had dropped from the parasite Player’s body and was still twitching on the floor. He looked around at the remaining parasite Players and spoke coldly.

"When the gap in strength is too wide, numbers mean nothing. After all..."

"You’re just a mob."

Hearing that, and seeing Asagiri, Yuuki Asuna, and Iwanaga Kotoko radiating overwhelming pressure, plus the black haired girl who had vanished again at some point, the one clearly carrying a black longbow but using a tomahawk to fight, the remaining parasite Players all began to writhe and melt into tangled masses of flesh.

"Yes. It is indeed impossible to kill you with numbers alone, but..."

All the parasite Players gradually gathered together. Twisting strips of flesh intertwined, beginning something very close to fusion. More than a dozen mouths opened across the surface of the writhing mound, speaking at once in different voices.

"As long as we become one, we can..."

"Persona, Meta!"

"Holy Cross!"

"Ice Spear!"

"Netherworld Grip!"

"Sword Skill: Stardust Splash!"

"Snipe!"

Crazy Mita’s grenade, Asagiri’s Holy Cross and Ice Spear, the giant pale ghost hand summoned by Iwanaga Kotoko, Yuuki Asuna’s strongest Sword Skill, and the three black arrows fired at once by Kato Megumi all struck the writhing mass of flesh at the same moment.

Boom!

The explosion from so many attacks converging into one shook the surrounding floor. Iwanaga Kotoko immediately raised a Black Particles barrier in front of them, stopping the flying chunks of flesh from splattering onto anyone.

"Wh... why..."

When the smoke and dust finally cleared, Asagiri saw a lone scrap of flesh on the ground, a mouth still twitching weakly on its surface as it forced out a sound.

He stepped on it without hesitation and ground it beneath his heel, laughing lightly.

"Do you think this is some kind of virtual game? That you get invincibility during the boss second phase transformation cutscene?"

From the very beginning, both Asagiri and Yuuki Asuna had been fully prepared for battle.

With the strength of their four person team, victory was never in doubt. The real problem was that the parasite Players were only puppets created by some bizarre being splitting off parts of its main body. On top of that, something in the Hotel was steadily driving the temperature higher. Wasting stamina and mental strength in a drawn out battle so early in the Dungeon would have been incredibly foolish.

For the four of them, the parasites’ actual combat strength was not the real threat. What made them troublesome was their abnormal vitality. Even with their heads pierced, they could keep fighting. At this stage, only Asagiri’s Supreme Magic Bullet, Yuuki Asuna’s Stardust Splash, and Iwanaga Kotoko’s Netherworld Grip could directly obliterate a Player’s body and force the flesh tentacles hidden inside to detach for good. The problem was that all three of those abilities came with a very high cost.

So Asagiri had used the classic diplomat method.

Provocation.

Taunting.

Any being capable of thought can be influenced by emotion, and bizarre entities are no exception.

He made the enemy realize that overwhelming them through numbers alone would never be enough to kill him, then destroyed all the parasite Players in one sweep at the very moment they chose to fuse together.

"Da da da~ I wonder what’s inside the control room. I’m so excited~"

Iwanaga Kotoko skipped toward the sealed door of the equipment room, her adorable face lit with excitement. For her, this was the most enjoyable moment, the instant of unveiling a mystery after the reasoning was done.

"Let me open it. What if there’s danger inside?"

"No, there won’t be."

Hearing Yuuki Asuna’s concern, Iwanaga Kotoko simply waved a hand and smiled.

"If the strange entity controlling the parasitic phenomenon could enter the equipment room, then it would have already used a parasite Player to destroy it. Since it had to guard the door instead, that proves it has no way of getting inside."

As she spoke, she twisted the knob and opened the door to the equipment room.

After opening it, however, she did not step inside at once. Instead, she leaned in from the doorway, peered carefully at the frame, and called out,

"Leader, come look at this."

Asagiri walked over and saw something like golden powder smeared along the inside of the doorframe.

He took out his phone and turned it on, then gently touched the powder with a fingertip. The eye icon app gave no reaction, and Iwanaga Kotoko could not sense any strange aura from it either.

"Is this what’s been keeping that strange entity out of the room...? I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s some kind of material containing spiritual power, something that can ward off evil..."

Iwanaga Kotoko stared at the inner side of the frame in fascination.

Meanwhile, Yuuki Asuna and Kato Megumi had already entered the equipment control room. In front of the desk were three monitors, but the camera feeds that should have displayed Hotel surveillance footage were nothing but black screens full of flickering static.

On the desk itself sat a red button beneath a transparent protective cover. Beside it was a label:

[Press three times consecutively to activate the emergency alarm.]

"Wait."

Just as Yuuki Asuna was about to press the button, Asagiri suddenly spoke.

"Something feels off."

He pulled out his phone and reread the special hint, carefully studying every word and punctuation mark. Then he noticed the problem.

"[Keep quiet]... It doesn’t say ’keep quiet during the danger period.’ It just says [Keep quiet]. Those final words feel abrupt, and they never specify a time. The system’s hints usually aren’t this sloppy or misleading."

"You mean..."

Yuuki Asuna frowned.

"The system’s instruction to keep quiet does not refer to a specific time period, and it doesn’t mean that the Players themselves have to remain quiet, but that the Hotel itself has to remain quiet?"

"I can’t prove it yet. It’s more of a feeling."

Asagiri stared at the red button on the desk and spoke calmly.

"Based on the information we currently have, we still can’t confirm that the strange entity controlling the parasitic phenomenon is actually afraid of loud, piercing sound. It definitely reacted with fear when it saw us trying to reach this room. It mobilized every parasite Player it had to stop us. But if you think carefully, that doesn’t necessarily mean it fears the alarm because of the sound alone."

He lowered his phone and looked at the three girls.

"More than twenty parasite Players are definitely troublesome. But if it had not been us, if it had been a more cautious team of Players that preferred safety over bonus points for a solo clear, then eighty or ninety normal Players working together could have pushed through the parasite defense just as easily."

He glanced toward the doorway.

"And on the way down to the first floor, we encountered almost no real obstruction at all. Would the difficulty of a third stage Dungeon really be that easy to break through?"

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Don’t forget, this Hotel is not an isolated space. We already know the Black Watch people came here before, and outside is a dark, unknown world. If we press that alarm like this..."

"Won’t it attract something even more terrifying?"

.....

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