Chapter 254: War Between Parasites and Players
Just as Asagiri finished speaking, a modern crossbow suddenly appeared in one of the parasitic Players' hands. A bolt shrieked through the air toward his chest.
"Bang."
A layer of Black Particles materialized in front of Asagiri and blocked the sharp crossbow bolt outright.
"IBM."
Iwanaga Kotoko's Black Particles twisted and condensed into two black, bandage wrapped humanoid figures. Then she looked at the parasitic Players, who were staring in bewilderment, clearly having no idea what had just happened. A faint smile appeared in her deep purple eyes as she spoke with interest.
"So that's how it is. Some of you don't have high enough mental strength to see my little black ones. That makes things much easier."
Then she called out to Asagiri.
"Leader, same as before. Fight freely!"
Asagiri dodged the slash of a long blade. The chain of the Rope Dart in his right hand instantly looped around the attacker's neck, while his left hand slammed a Holy Cross directly onto the opponent's head. Holy flames erupted, reducing the body to ashes. Only then did he reply calmly.
"It's finally starting."
The four members of the team had long since settled into their combat roles.
Yuuki Asuna was responsible for the front line.
Iwanaga Kotoko provided long range support with her many strange abilities.
Kato Megumi, after obtaining the Bloodstained Nightingale Bow and the skill [Snipe], used her exclusive talent, which made her less likely to draw aggro, to deal damage from the rear. At critical moments, she could also switch into a berserker style assassin to protect the warlock class Kotoko.
As for Asagiri, his combat style was far too unrestrained.
One moment he fought at range with spells, the next he switched to close quarters. Even his Personas changed constantly in the middle of battle. Even Yuuki Asuna, whose reactions and speed were the fastest, found it difficult to match his rhythm, let alone coordinate with him.
So, in the end, he had been designated a free agent.
"Bang!"
Asagiri spotted a tall parasitic Player rushing toward him and immediately thrust out the Rope Dart. Yet this opponent displayed astonishing speed, no slower than his own. Something like metallic armor appeared over the man's right arm, and he slapped the stabbing Rope Dart aside. At the same time, his leg lashed out in a brutal whip kick aimed at Asagiri's waist.
[Kings Gambit.]
In the next instant, Asagiri vanished from where he stood.
In his place appeared the Human Asura, a towering black figure covered in dark red texture. It crouched slightly and raised its left arm to block the whip kick.
With a deafening impact, the Human Asura's massive body shifted nearly a meter sideways. A clear dent appeared in its left arm.
"To be able to damage the Human Asura that much… he's a fighter."
Asagiri, who had just swapped places with the Human Asura, had no time to breathe. Most of the parasitic Players under the bizarre entity's control attacked him again at once.
"Root Entangle!"
Several thick, writhing roots tore through the floor and coiled around Asagiri's legs.
Immediately after, a short parasitic Player met Asagiri's gaze. A strange light bloomed in his dark green pupils.
[Curse Gaze!]
Curse Gaze was a basic skill for warlock classes. It was not an ability unique to Iwanaga Kotoko, so it was perfectly normal for a parasitic Player with a warlock build to possess it.
What that parasitic Player did not expect was that Asagiri made no effort to avoid his eyes. On the contrary, he stared straight back at him as if irritated.
At that moment, terror flooded the parasitic Player's mind.
Within Asagiri's black eyes, he seemed to see black flames burning. Their intersecting gazes became like a rope linking their souls, and those black flames followed that rope, drilling into his eye sockets from Asagiri's pupils.
"No…"
The parasitic Player's body convulsed violently. Its surface twisted into writhing strips of flesh, and then, amid a desperate scream, the entire body disintegrated. The flesh strips that made up his form turned into scorched ash and scattered into nothing.
"How ugly."
Asagiri exerted a little force and tore free of the roots. Looking at the more than twenty parasitic Players surrounding him, he pinched a phantom tarot card from the air, slowly crushed it in his fingers, and said:
[Persona, Alice.]
Alice appeared on the field.
With blonde hair, blue eyes, and a lovely dress, she held a teddy bear in her arms and looked sweet and innocent. She smiled at the surrounding parasitic Players and said softly,
"Please die for me."
The moment those words fell, seven parasitic Players trembled violently. Just like the warlock type one moments ago, they turned into ash and vanished.
Seeing that scene, the White Suit Man and the others, who were fighting off the parasitic Players, could not help but feel shaken.
What kind of ability was that?
There were no warning signs. No visible fluctuation of power. The little girl had merely spoken, and the souls of those parasitic Players obediently followed her words and died.
The other Players were only shocked. The White Suit Man and his teammates, however, exchanged glances, all wearing complicated expressions.
That sight reminded them of the last Dungeon.
The God they had faced then had been the same. No warning, no visible surge of power, and in the blink of an eye, two of their teammates had disappeared. Only later, through the friend system in the eye icon app, had they confirmed those two had died.
Could the blonde little girl that Asagiri had just summoned also be a God?
"What's wrong?"
Looking at the terrified parasitic Players, Asagiri casually crushed another tarot card, switching Alice out for Prototype Mita. The puppet's jaw joints clicked and creaked as it appeared. In the next second, it had already rushed in front of the fighter type parasitic Player and launched a side kick.
"Bang!!!"
The fighter crossed his arms in front of him, bringing up the armored right armguard to block. His feet scraped across the floor, sliding backward more than ten centimeters, but he seemed otherwise unharmed.
[Body Enhancement.]
[Earth Blessing.]
[Thorn Fence.]
Looking at the fighter whose body had bulged slightly and was covered in a layer of yellow brown light, and at the thorn cage that had grown up around them both, trapping them inside, Asagiri merely said:
"A Horse Racing strategy. You're using him to pin me down. Pretty clever."
"We're the lower class horse, huh…"
Yuuki Asuna stared at the parasitic Players slowly closing in on her and snorted coldly.
"Being underestimated really is annoying."
[Wind Blessing.]
Understanding Yuuki Asuna's meaning from a single glance, Iwanaga Kotoko raised her hand toward the parasitic Players in front of them and spoke softly.
[Undead Touch.]
Nearly a hundred pale, twisted arms rose from the floor like vengeful dead grasping for substitutes, clawing toward the bodies of the parasitic Players. While their attention was drawn away by the ghostly hands and they tried to avoid being touched, a dark red blur had already plunged straight into their formation.
Yuuki Asuna was fast.
Faster even than Asagiri in his Human Asura strengthened state.
The parasitic Players were not her match. Before they could even track her movements, Gleaming Light had already pierced through their bodies.
Yet after only a few seconds, Yuuki Asuna immediately pulled back.
The instant her figure disappeared, fire exploded where she had just been standing.
"Boom!!!"
Yuuki Asuna returned to Iwanaga Kotoko and Kato Megumi's side. Looking at the parasitic Players whose wounds had already recovered, she adjusted her breathing and said steadily:
"We can beat them, but killing them is difficult."
Kato Megumi gave a slight nod as she looked at the fully restored parasitic Players.
"Yes. Very troublesome."
The three girls had already discovered that the parasitic Players on this floor were different from the ones before.
Perhaps because this floor was the domain of that bizarre entity, it no longer needed to control them by splitting off tentacles. It could create them directly. And these parasitic Players possessed vitality so absurd it was almost immortality.
At present, only methods like Asagiri's, which directly destroyed the mind, could completely kill them.
The problem was that among everyone here, only five Players, including Iwanaga Kotoko, had mental attack type abilities, and those attacks were limited to interference and disruption. None of them could directly destroy a parasitic Player's mind.
"Huff…"
Inside the thorn cage, Asagiri noticed that even Holy Cross only left light burns on the fighter, burns that healed almost instantly. His expression shifted slightly.
Holy Cross carried both holy and fire attributes, and naturally restrained bizarre parasitic beings. But for a fighter like the one in front of him, whose base defense was already extremely high, that was the limit of the damage he could inflict.
[Kings Gambit.]
Facing the punch hurled by the fighter type parasitic Player, Asagiri instantly swapped places with Prototype Mita outside the cage.
Then, together with Yuuki Asuna, Iwanaga Kotoko, and Kato Megumi, he withdrew to the entrance of the banquet hall, joining the four members of the White Suit Man's team.
Seeing them fall back, the parasitic Players also stopped their attack for the moment. The ordinary parasites controlled by the cursed entity, who had been clashing with the other Players, retreated a short distance as well.
"Are you still going to resist pointlessly?"
The voices of dozens of parasitic Players, along with the human faces on the surrounding walls and floor, overlapped into one.
"As long as you become part of me, you can live."
"Come… come…"
.....
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