Chapter 197: Cycle and Escape
"So it's coming..."
The Doctor's voice brimmed with excitement and frenzy, as if he had just laid eyes on the perfect test subject.
"Let me witness it with my own eyes. That power capable of controlling powerful Entities!"
The next second, Asagiri's eyes shifted from black to gold, and a suffocating wave of power erupted from his body. The hem of his long black coat fluttered lightly, and a great battle was about to begin when
"Retreat!"
Asagiri spun around without hesitation, grabbed Yuuki Asuna and Kato Megumi by the hand, and sprinted toward the other end of the corridor.
Unlike the bewildered Yuuki Asuna and Kato Megumi, Iwanaga Kotoko seemed to have expected this all along. She had deliberately taken the rear when they formed up for battle, so the moment they changed direction, she naturally became the one leading the way.
"This way! I remember the route!"
After they had run dozens of meters, Yuuki Asuna finally reacted.
"Weren't we supposed to fight them? Why are we running?"
"Only an idiot would fight them."
Even while running, Asagiri's breathing remained steady, and somehow, even the way he fled still looked elegant.
"They can keep reviving through the bizarre power of Kyozan Mental Hospital. Fighting them is completely meaningless apart from wasting stamina. We already got what we came for, so of course we go straight upstairs."
"I see."
Yuuki Asuna adjusted her breathing as best she could and glanced at him.
"With how wild and reckless you usually are, I really thought you meant to fight them head on."
"Heh, don't underestimate me."
Asagiri spoke with complete seriousness and grand momentum.
"Skipping class when you can skip class is also a necessary quality for an excellent Player!"
The moment his words fell, the surroundings suddenly began to distort. In the next instant, the four of them found themselves back at the entrance to the elevator shaft.
"This...?"
While Yuuki Asuna and the others were still staring in confusion, unable to understand why their position had suddenly changed, Asagiri merely said calmly,
"Twenty minutes."
"What do you mean, twenty minutes?"
Kato Megumi looked at him in confusion.
"Twenty minutes is the time from when we entered this floor to now. It is also the duration of one cycle."
"Huh?"
Yuuki Asuna's face changed. It took her a few seconds to process it.
"You mean the bizarre power on this floor can also trap us in a loop? If we want to reach the upper floor, we have to find a way off this floor within twenty minutes, or we'll be sent back here again when the cycle resets? So the real difficulty of this floor was actually this..."
"You're thinking too simply."
Iwanaga Kotoko looked at the three of them, her expression solemn.
"This time, we do not have twenty full minutes. The longer we remain here, the more bizarre power we become contaminated with. The first cycle lasted twenty minutes, but the next one will be shorter. And if we cannot escape this floor and keep getting dragged back into the cycle... eventually, we will never be able to leave."
Yuuki Asuna and Kato Megumi both immediately realized how bad the situation was.
"Is there any way to remove the bizarre contamination?" Yuuki Asuna asked at once.
"No."
Iwanaga Kotoko shook her head first, then looked toward Asagiri. Even now, her small face still carried its usual elegant smile.
"The other side guessed we would go to Hodell. The three possibilities I mentioned about the illusion earlier were all wrong. It did not create that illusion to block our path outright. It simply used the illusion, and our instinct to analyze why it showed us that illusion, to drag out our time on this floor until we absorbed enough bizarre power to fall into the cycle. There is strange aura everywhere in this Dungeon, which dulled my perception. I got played."
"It's impossible for every deduction to be correct. This isn't your fault."
Asagiri comforted her first, then slowly said,
"In that case, we force our way through. We smash every obstacle in front of us and get to the upper floor as fast as possible."
...
Thirteen minutes later, in Area D of Floor B2 in Kyozan Mental Hospital
"Haa..."
Yuuki Asuna's breathing had turned ragged. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, fine beads of sweat had formed on her forehead, her left hand hung weakly at her side, and even the hand holding her sword trembled slightly.
She stared at the dozen or so ghoul corpses in restraints lying in front of them as their blood and filth slowly sank into the ground, then bit her lip.
"These things are way too troublesome. You can't kill them all."
In just thirteen minutes, the four of them had already crashed through three waves of enemies in succession.
This time, unlike before the cycle, there were no Twin Brothers or Doctor among them, only more than a dozen Anomalies that had once been mental patients, nurses, or doctors.
Why had the full enemy lineup not appeared? Why was the Doctor, the boss of this floor, seemingly holding back?
It was not because he was going easy.
There was only one answer.
He was guarding against Asagiri's Supreme Magic Bullet.
The Doctor was an Anomaly, but he clearly possessed a high level of intelligence and even a degree of control over the bizarre rules inside Kyozan Mental Hospital, such as dragging the team into the illusion and then into the cycle.
Asagiri's Supreme Magic Bullet was a power that severed "immortality" itself. Chris Walker, as an Anomaly born from Kyozan Mental Hospital, had originally been able to reform through the cycle, but once struck by Supreme Magic Bullet, he had been erased from the root.
For some reason, the Doctor knew about that ability.
So throughout the team's advance, he only sent out expendable anomalies to stall and wear them down. Even if Asagiri wasted Supreme Magic Bullet on these fodder enemies, the Doctor could simply send the Twin Brothers next to block him.
In short, he was deliberately preventing the powerful anomalies on this floor from being wiped out by a single Supreme Magic Bullet.
"Faster! I can feel the cycle getting closer!"
At Iwanaga Kotoko's warning, the other three immediately sped up. When they reached the entrance to the emergency stairwell in Area D, they saw the Twin Brothers silently blocking the way.
"Persona!"
There was no time to waste. Asagiri summoned Crazy Mita at once.
"Move!"
Crazy Mita's face lacked its usual manic grin. Instead, there was only a trace of urgency. When the Twin Brother swung his spiked club down at her, she did not dodge at all. She simply raised her left arm to block and reached out with her right hand to grab his neck.
Bang!
Two dull impacts sounded at once.
Crazy Mita's left arm was blown clean off and sent flying, but in return, she used her monstrous strength to lift the Twin Brother and hurl him into the distance.
As Yuuki Asuna rushed toward the opening, she ignored the burning pain in her right wrist and grit her teeth.
"Sword Skill: Stardust Splash!"
Eight brilliant slashes burst forth.
This time, however, they only carved several deep wounds into the Twin Brother's body. They failed to tear him apart like before.
Even with Swordsman's Resolve halving the stamina cost of her sword skills, Yuuki Asuna was already on the edge of exhaustion. Her speed was no longer what it had been, and the destructive power of her technique had dropped sharply as a result.
Seeing this, the Twin Brother raised his writhing, swollen arm, clenched his fist, and swung down toward Yuuki Asuna's head.
At that very moment, a pair of deep purple eyes entered his vision.
Iwanaga Kotoko activated [Curse Gaze].
Even twisted by experiments into a powerful ghoul, the Twin Brother's mental strength was still inferior to hers.
His body stalled for a brief instant.
And that instant was more than enough.
"King's Gambit."
Asagiri swapped places with Yuuki Asuna. His Rope Dart chain lashed around the Twin Brother's neck, and with a fierce pull, he hurled the monster away.
"Throw."
Kato Megumi hurled the Indian Tomahawk in her hand with all her might. Even with his monstrous physique, the Twin Brother, unable to brace himself, was blasted back more than ten meters.
The team's goal was not to kill Twin.
It was simply to clear them away from the stairwell entrance as fast as possible.
"Inside!"
Asagiri was the first to burst into the emergency stairwell. The sign on the wall showed B1. He immediately sprinted upward.
Kato Megumi, Yuuki Asuna, and Iwanaga Kotoko followed right behind him.
But just as Iwanaga Kotoko was about to step onto the stairs, something clamped around her ankle.
"This is...!"
She turned sharply and saw an arm stretching out from a puddle of blood and filth on the floor, followed by the Doctor's face, still wearing that black gas mask.
"King's Gambit."
Asagiri, who had already climbed partway up the stairs, saw what happened and switched places with her instantly.
The moment he appeared, he drove the Rope Dart straight into the Doctor's arm. To his surprise, the arm looked no sturdier than a dead branch, yet his full strength only drove the sharp point in less than half a centimeter.
Before Yuuki Asuna could turn back to help him, Asagiri had already switched weapons. He drew the black sniper rifle, aimed at his own calf, and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Ordinarily, a sniper round would have blown a normal person's lower leg clean apart.
But Asagiri's leg did not fully shatter.
"Tch. Bullet resistance is really troublesome at times like this. Human Asura."
At his call, Human Asura appeared instantly and ripped off the half shattered leg for him.
The moment he broke free of the Doctor's grip, Asagiri switched back to the Rope Dart and hurled it upward.
Understanding immediately, Yuuki Asuna grabbed the chain and yanked him up onto the stairs.
.....
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