Chapter 109: The Phantom Troupe's Fastest Movement? Eat My Righteous Poison Throw!
[Castlevania III Secret Realm Rule 1: Standard monsters in Castlevania can only be harmed by weapons, spells, or Nen abilities. If a monster is touched with bare hands, the person touching receives certain damage while the monster receives none.]
[Secret Realm Rule 2: When any player in the domain receives any form of damage, they are forcibly sent 2 meters backward and enter a "Phase Movement" state lasting 1 second, during which they can pass through monsters and will not receive damage from monsters. If on a staircase when damage is received, the forced backward jump will not be triggered.]
When Ross used the password to officially activate New Game Plus, pulling this area as completely as possible under the Secret Realm stage's internal rules, it meant the visitors had entered fully into his domain.
Through the simplest possible information gap: a ghoul unit that an ordinary person swinging a stick could easily shatter would, when touched with bare hands, deal considerable contact damage to an experienced Nen user.
Ross didn't know the Troupe members' personalities intimately, but he knew them well enough.
Feitan had the appearance of someone calm. In reality, he had the worst temper and least patience in the entire Troupe. He was very prone to underestimating targets when they seemed weak.
And since every location in the Grand Cemetery was a monster respawn point, Ross directly adjusted the spawn position, moving it straight under Feitan's feet.
Nobunaga had his katanas. Franklin had his Nen blasts. Machi would almost certainly dodge backward. Only Feitan would stamp directly down.
"Feitan, you're getting weaker. You can't even crush one pathetic thing like this?"
Possibly because Feitan had half his face covered and was completely unreadable, Nobunaga assumed they had run into some kind of special individual. Not only had it not been crushed, but the impact had also triggered a wary backward jump. So he took a small hop and came down on the ghoul's head.
"Don't—"
Feitan's warning had barely left his mouth before Nobunaga's foot connected.
He followed in Feitan's footsteps with complete predictability. The same piercing pain shot through his body, and he involuntarily shot backward like he'd taken a gut punch.
At this moment, every person present looked at each other, then all instinctively stared at the top of the ghoul's head: the one that had now been stamped twice and remained entirely unaffected.
One person experiencing this could be coincidence. Both people having the exact same result was obviously a problem.
"Ah. It's dead."
Ross watched the black-and-white death effect from an umbrella punching through the ghoul's skull, as well as Feitan's quite visibly heaving chest, and pursed his lips.
This trick could only work once. With their level of intelligence, getting hit once should be enough for them to roughly map the rules. Time to change position and cause trouble elsewhere.
Trap activation timing, monster spawn point adjustments, monster tactical AI priorities...
Ross suddenly felt like he was playing Castlevania III the way you'd play Kagero: Deception.
"This place... has something wrong with it."
Machi, watching the monsters that had become entirely non-threatening once the others switched to weapons and Nen blasts, felt an inexplicable unease she couldn't put into words.
Like something was constantly watching them.
What made it worse was that this sensation of being watched fluctuated, stronger then weaker, but the correct source never revealed itself. Her nerves stayed taut, unable to relax for a moment.
The downside of sensitivity.
"Should we wait for the others before we go deeper?"
Franklin, the largest member present but also the most rational and steady, asked after sweeping another circle of monsters away with his Nen blasts.
He also felt that this place was different from anywhere they'd raided before. Very unsettling. Small wonder it was called Castlevania.
But one person had no intention of waiting.
Without a word, Feitan swung his umbrella like cutting through a mob, scattered every monster that tried to approach, and then planted a kick into the door of a crumbling church-style building.
Feitan was angry. What made it worse was that he couldn't find an appropriate target to take it out on.
So the only thing he could do was cut everything in sight to pieces.
"To be honest, I'm also fairly annoyed. Feels like this god-forsaken place is making a fool of us."
Shaking his foot, with visible veins on his temple, Nobunaga said this and immediately followed after Feitan.
Machi and Franklin, the two who had stayed behind, exchanged a look. Then chose to turn around and head back the way they came.
The four had split into two temporary pairs.
Every Troupe member had an intensely strong personality. Without the leader as a north star, everyone tended to act on their own impulses.
Franklin was actually the person second only to the leader and the wandering knight when it came to being a stabilizing center for the group. But the issue was that while this area was strange, it didn't have that "lethal" quality. The two stubborn ones had already moved. No need to create a conflict over something this minor, and certainly no need to invoke the coin rule to stop them.
"Let's wait for the wandering knight. He's better at reading rules and patterns."
"Agreed."
Machi, following her instincts, nodded at Franklin.
On the other side of the screen, Ross had shifted to a god's-eye view to observe the full picture. When he saw them split into pairs, he couldn't help raising an eyebrow.
They genuinely weren't taking his Kagero Castlevania seriously.
That said: once Feitan and Nobunaga figured out that the monster units here couldn't hurt them as long as they didn't touch them bare-handed, and that swinging any weapon would easily deal with them, the two of them cut through the Grand Cemetery like it wasn't there.
Ghouls, Skeleton Soldiers, Flying Skulls, Medusa Heads, Vampire Bats, Fleamen, Skull Knights: none of them meaningfully slowed the advance. But through Ross's constant target-switching and direct manual control, a string of results that were thoroughly irritating without being lethal accumulated steadily.
For instance: Flying Skulls that could pass through walls. Ross deliberately placed their spawn on the outside of walls, then had them phase through directly into Nobunaga's head.
If not for Nobunaga's iaijutsu draw-cut being absurdly fast, his topknot would probably have been bitten off.
Or the Skull Knight formations: Ross set up double-stacked Skull Knights breathing fire, mixed up the timing and attack sequence, and precisely lined up fireballs to hit just as Feitan was mid-strike.
Even ranking among the fastest in the Troupe, Feitan still pulled off a last-instant umbrella deflection at the absolute limit. The scattered sparks still caught his black robe though.
Ross could see the veins rising on Feitan's hand from where he was watching.
This particular kind of harassment that annoyed without actually biting was not common in their combined robbery experience.
Didn't matter. The goal was exactly to get them irritated.
Finally, just as they were approaching the BOSS arena clearing at the edge of the Grand Cemetery, Ross switched his perspective to the area's original native BOSS.
The Grand Cemetery was too open for the Four Saint Beasts. He'd probe with the native BOSS first.
[Detected: you are controlling BOSS unit "Skeleton Warrior."]
[The Skeleton Warrior's physical constitution meets the threshold to receive additional temporary character template mapping.]
[Your currently available character templates: Kunio, Sonic, Gilgamesh, Trevor Belmont.]
[You have selected "Gilgamesh."]
Feitan stepped first into the zone linking the Grand Cemetery to the next major area, triggering the BOSS fight.
The horned skull on the ground ignited blazing soul-fire in its eyes and began rising from the earth.
Seeing nothing unusual about this horned skull, Feitan went through the same motion again and jabbed at it with his umbrella.
But—
Clang!
The skeleton warrior, still half-buried, raised the materialized Hero's Shield with precise timing, blocking the umbrella jab cleanly, then in the same motion swung the Hero's Sword at Feitan's shin.
The sudden powerful counterattack caught Feitan off guard, but his extensive combat experience still had him push hard against the umbrella, using the backwards force from pressing against the opponent's shield to lightly spring back and dodge the skeleton warrior's threatening horizontal slash.
That brief hesitation was all it took for the skeleton warrior to fully emerge from the earth.
Feitan squinted, watching it shake the dirt from its body and reveal a full suit of gleaming golden armor that was completely at odds with the word "skeleton." A look of greed appeared on his face.
"Soul mechanics. I know those."
Watching the screen interface that was nearly identical to a certain Dark Souls 3, and the low-budget Hiei lookalike with half his face covered on the other side, Ross flashed a full eight-tooth grin and switched his equipped item to...
A poison bottle. The kind that reduced the target's health.
The skeleton warrior reached behind itself, switching instantly from the righteous Hero's Sword to a righteous poison bottle, and slammed it hard into the ground between them. The highly toxic liquid vaporized on impact with the shattering glass and scattered outward in all directions.
Eat my righteous poison throw!