"That's good news." Hearing Asagiri's affirmation, Kotoko couldn't help but curve her lips upward. Like a child showing off her achievements, she slightly raised her chin, looking smug. "Not only that, I can feel that these zombies, likely due to their low intelligence, have mental resistance that's even worse than ordinary people, let alone Banshees. So my Curse Gaze, which originally only caused negative effects, can directly kill them! How about that, isn't it amazing?"
Asagiri smiled and nodded: "Amazing."
Kotoko got straight to the point, still smiling. "Then, Leader, reward me by carrying me, okay? After all, my stamina isn't very good, plus I have a disability. Moving around is very difficult. You wouldn't have the heart to see me so pitiful, right?"
"Morally blackmailing me?" Asagiri returned the smile.
"Fortunately, I have no morals; otherwise, I would have really been blackmailed by you. Walk by yourself."
Seeing her scheme fail, Kotoko muttered softly. "What an unsympathetic guy..."
"Anyway, regarding the answer to this dungeon's mystery..." Asagiri took out his phone, looking at the detailed map of the city. His gaze fixed on the marker at the very center of the city that read 'Mochizuki Hospital,' he said calmly, "Maybe we'll find it here."
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After the four left the apartment building and stepped out onto the street, they found that within their field of vision, there was no sign of any zombie at all. It wasn't the apocalyptic scene they imagined, with zombies rampant on the streets and a pervasive stench of decay like a living hell. Instead, it was a silent, lifeless dead city.
This strange sense of incongruity made Asuna, Kotoko, and Megumi, who had cleared dungeons twice before, feel that something was profoundly wrong.
"Not a single zombie? This..." Asuna frowned tightly, gripping the Exorcist Longsword in her hand. Honestly, if the four had encountered a tide of dozens, or even hundreds, of zombies the moment they came out, she wouldn't be this nervous. But the current situation, where they knew there was danger but didn't know where it was coming from, was the most suffocating and heavy.
"Please pay attention to the surrounding environment at all times... Wait a minute, what is this?" Just as Asuna was thinking this, she noticed some sticky yellowish-green liquid on the exhaust pipe of a motorcycle on the side of the street. Although she had a slight mysophobia, they were in a dungeon at the moment, so she didn't care about that and immediately went closer to observe.
"This liquid... It's so disgusting, and it gives off an extremely strong foul smell..." While Asuna was observing, Asagiri also came over. He squatted down, observing the sticky yellow liquid on the motorcycle's exhaust pipe, and said thoughtfully, "The color of this thing... it looks a bit like bile."
"Bile?" Asuna raised her hand and tucked her long hair back, saying thoughtfully, "Could it be that someone died here, and in a gruesome way, where their body was torn open, so bile was left behind?"
"Not likely." Asagiri shook his head, glanced at the surrounding ground, and said softly, "There are no bloodstains on the surrounding ground, let alone body parts or internal organs." Speaking of which, Asagiri paused slightly, then stood up, looked at Asuna, Kotoko, and Megumi in front of him, and proposed a reasonable hypothesis that the three of them hadn't thought of before.
"Although the keyword for this dungeon is 'zombie,' and the name of the dungeon location contains the words 'Doomsday,' and there are indeed zombies, those slow-moving zombies that don't spread viruses simply cannot pose any fatal threat to Players. It would be one thing if there were many of them, but there isn't even a single zombie in sight on the street. So I believe the main challenge set for this dungeon is not zombies."
"Indeed, the difficulty of this dungeon is strangely low." Kotoko, leaning on her cane, analyzed.
"The so-called zombies are not only weak, but at the location where we entered the dungeon, there just happened to be a book that let us know that zombies are slow-moving and don't spread viruses, and that the city's water source is not contaminated. With so much valuable information, the system's arrangement must not be a coincidence. The only reasonable explanation is... the system wants Players to go out and explore, which is why it provided so much information in the initial stage, letting Players know that even if they encounter ordinary zombies, they won't be too dangerous as long as they handle them carefully."
"Then..." Megumi asked cautiously, "If there are Players who know this information but just don't want to face any danger, only wanting to hide where they entered the dungeon, and then wait until the time limit is up to complete the dungeon..."
"Then they are dead." Asagiri shook his head, his tone flat. "This is not a novice dungeon; it won't be that easy to clear. Giving two different completion objectives seems like the system is letting Players choose freely, but in reality, it's precisely because there's a choice that there will be a sense of 'luck mentality'. The first part of this dungeon's challenge is the Player's initiative. To put it more bluntly, it's to eliminate those who just want to muddle through the dungeon and don't care about the completion rewards. Such Players have no value to this game."
"Then the second part of this challenge is this strange bile trace?" Asuna seemed to have thought of something and said, "Could it be... this bile is the trace left by the so-called 'special infected'? The public hint is to pay attention to the surrounding environment, meaning to let Players avoid those special infected during their actions, and then collect information like maps to find the route to 'Mochizuki Hospital'?"
"Yes, for ordinary Players, this is the most reasonable plan to achieve a high-level completion evaluation. But I want to verify something. Violet can also gain strength through killing, so..." At this point, Asagiri's eyes showed an eager, excited look. "Let's go find those special infected."
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Nearly an hour later, in an underground parking lot.
"More bile... and the amount has significantly increased..." Asuna looked at the large amount of yellowish-green viscous liquid attached to the ground, walls, and surrounding vehicles, then looked at Asagiri beside her, and spoke softly, "It seems we are very close now."
While tracking the bile traces and searching for the "special infected" just now, Asagiri and the others had already determined their location. The straight-line distance from the city center's Mochizuki Hospital was about twenty kilometers. Even for ordinary people, if they quickened their pace, they could probably reach it in about three hours. However, they had to constantly observe the surrounding environment and guard against special infected that could appear at any time. Ordinary Players couldn't act without fear or hesitation like Asagiri and the others, so it was hard to say how much time it would take.
"Yeah, and it just happens to be a parking lot..." Just as Asagiri said this, a sound like vomiting came from behind a van about twenty meters in front of them.
"Ugh..." Along with the sound of vomiting, a large mass of yellowish-green viscous liquid fell to the ground. The next second, a creature walked out from behind the van. It had a bloated body, a belly swollen to an exaggerated size, and tumor-like growths on its face, belly, and arms.
"Is that the special infected...?" Seeing the appearance of this special infected, Asuna tightened her grip on the Exorcist Longsword in her hand and was about to launch an attack when she was stopped by Asagiri.
"Wait a moment, step back." Asagiri led Asuna, Kotoko, and Megumi silently away, while raising his black gun-shaped summoner and aiming it at his temple.
"Persona..."
"Human Asura."
The moment Human Asura appeared, the bloated, big-bellied special infected seemed to sense the movement from this side. It slowly turned around and took steps, walking slowly towards the direction where Asagiri and the others stood. However, before it could take two steps, Human Asura was already in front of it. Its massive right hand reached out and grabbed the special infected's head like a ball, then ignored the slapping of its two cystic arms and dragged it directly back behind the van.
Immediately after, there was a loud bang.
Bang!!
Asuna and Kotoko were both very familiar with this sound. They had heard a similar sound during the previous Hotel dungeon, when the bodies of the two suicidal Players exploded.
"OK, solved." Asagiri canceled the summoning of Human Asura. Because Persona was a power condensed from his heart, he could also sense the approximate destructive power generated when the bloated special infected exploded through Human Asura.
Immediately after, Asagiri led Asuna, Kotoko, and Megumi to the back of the van. What they saw was a scene of utter chaos: body parts, organ fragments, yellowish-green mucus, flesh, and blood. These many disgusting things gathered together made both Asuna and Megumi instinctively turn their heads, unable to bear looking directly at the sight.
Kotoko, however, did not look away, as if the disgusting scene did not affect her at all. She just murmured, "So that's it. This guy's exaggeratedly swollen belly is full of bile. Once struck by external force, it explodes. It's the type that can't be killed at close range and can only be attacked from a distance..."
After saying this, Kotoko looked at Asagiri and asked curiously, "You said before that you wanted to confirm something through the special infected. What was it?"
"It's this." Asagiri pointed to the ground. Kotoko, Asuna, and Megumi followed the direction of his finger and saw a black object, about two centimeters long, easily overlooked if one wasn't careful, lying quietly among the scattered flesh and blood remains and yellowish-green mucus.
"This is..." Kotoko recognized the object at a glance, her brows furrowed. "An implanted locator?"