Just as the man was step by step closing in on the young girl, a slight but very unusual noise suddenly rang out abruptly in this otherwise quiet room.
Clink, clink...
The smile on the middle-aged man's face froze, and with somewhat stiff movements, he turned his head toward the source of the sound.
On that wide velvet armchair he had been sitting on just a moment ago, a male who appeared to be a 'youth' based on his facial features had somehow appeared, wearing a crisp formal suit.
The other party held the bottle of red wine he had just opened, pouring the wine into a glass goblet as if nothing had happened, then raised the glass toward the warm light of the ceiling lamp, admiring the liquid that looked like a ruby with great interest.
"Hmm, so that's how it is..." the youth muttered to himself.
"Who are you?"
The middle-aged man's body tensed as he stared warily at the other party.
After all, the way the other party appeared was truly too bizarre—there was only one door to this room, and as he had been approaching the girl, the door had remained within his field of vision the entire time and had never been opened.
Could it be that he had been lurking in the room from the very beginning?
He compared his own physique with the other party's, and suddenly regained some confidence, puffing out his bloated beer belly: "Get out of here right now, and I might just forgive your unrefined behavior."
This was a lie.
Even if the other party truly left the room obediently, he would immediately call his subordinates to seize the youth.
As for how he would deal with him afterward, that would depend on his mood.
"Oh? Then do I still need to thank you?"
The youth looked at him with a half-smile.
"No need for thanks, this is the compassion I should have as a person sent by the Lord to bring the gospel to the world." A smile piled up on the middle-aged man's face, which, combined with his eyebrows that were slightly longer than average, gave off a somewhat benevolent and kind feeling.
However, while speaking, he began to move toward the youth with a seemingly casual manner.
"You keep talking about some 'Lord,' but I can't sense even a trace of faith from your words."
The youth seemed not to notice his malicious intentions, asking with mock innocence: "And what if I refuse?"
"Then wait until your next life to talk about it!"
The man lunged toward the youth with an agility that did not match his physique.
However, before he could try to grab the youth's neck to subdue him, something hard slammed violently against his nose.
Tartness and pain surged up from the bridge of his nose simultaneously, and tears welled up uncontrollably in his eyes, causing the man to stumble back several steps while clutching his nose.
Only then did he see clearly that in the moment he had lunged, the youth had raised the newly opened bottle of red wine, letting him have a close encounter with the thick glass bottom.
The expression on the face of the youth who had done all this did not change in the slightest; he remained sitting on the armchair with a beaming smile, looking at him with a leisurely air.
The middle-aged man finally realized that the person in front of him was not someone who could be easily dealt with.
So without hesitation, he pulled out a Samsung phone from his bathrobe, planning to call his lackeys for help.
"You've actually reminded me."
And at that very moment, as if the youth had thought of something, he placed the wine bottle into the ice bucket beside him, pressed his index and middle fingers together, and held them vertically in front of his face, speaking softly.
"[Domain Expansion: Minkowski Particle Dispersion]."
In the next instant, the lights in the room began to flicker erratically, and the phone in the middle-aged man's hand even emitted a burst of electric sparks, making him think the battery was about to explode and causing him to hurriedly throw it aside.
"What did you do?" The middle-aged man looked at the youth with reddened eyes.
If he had previously thought the youth was just a hot-headed brat, then from this moment on, the middle-aged man officially regarded the other party as an equal existence to himself.
The existence of some kind of 'difficult to understand power.'
"It's just turning a limited fighting match into an unlimited slaughter, that's all."
The youth said with a beaming smile: "From now on, all monitoring, recording, and communication devices will completely fail. Before the expanded domain disappears, this hotel has become a lawless land in the literal sense..."
Before the youth could finish, the middle-aged man shoved aside the young girl behind him and fled toward the exit.
However, the door to the room was like a statue embedded in the wall; no matter how he distorted the handle, there was no response.
Only then did the middle-aged man remember that, because of his own request to prevent the girl from escaping, this door was locked from the inside and could only be opened with his own key card.
The problem was that the device which was supposed to read the key card no longer showed the green light indicating it was 'working.' Even if he took out the key card and tried to swipe it, there was no reaction at all—he had completely trapped himself.
"This is what is called bringing it upon oneself, reaping what one sows."
The youth slowly stood up from the velvet armchair, speaking in a tone that seemed to see through everything.
The middle-aged man's face turned blue with rage: "You brat, I am the Pope of the Church of Happiness! I am a big figure you won't even be able to touch in your entire life! Show me some respect!"
"I'm actually curious, where did you get the confidence to say such things to me?"
The youth tilted his mouth, speaking in the tone of a Dragon King: "Could it be, it's just this?"
As he spoke, he turned the goblet in his hand upside down, and the crimson wine spilled all over the floor, creating a startlingly bright red mess on the carpet.
And within that patch of red, one could vaguely see something translucent wriggling slightly.
That was a bug.
Or rather, a 'Gu bug.'
Of course, it could also be something else, but according to Asakura's knowledge, it was definitely this thing.
When he first started attending the banquet, Asakura had sensed a trace of 'unnaturalness' or 'dissonance' from some people that was hard to detect.
However, he didn't sense any magic power, so he hadn't paid much attention to it.
It wasn't until he was chatting with Yukinoshita Haruno that he noticed some strange things.
Only then did he capture that trace of the root of 'unnaturalness' in the wine glass in the other party's hand.
Subsequently, Asakura realized even more things.
For instance, many cults being able to penetrate the high levels of the political sphere often required many years of cultivation and a deep foundation to achieve.
Yet the Cult had managed to do this in a much shorter time, and their control over many believers was even stronger than other cults.
Originally, Asakura simply thought people in this cult were better at brainwashing, but now it seemed that was not the case.