Asagiri did not speak up to warn them. He simply watched in silence through the peephole on the door.
Mr. Ichikawa and his two teammates in Room 7011 across the hall were clearly not fools. They had no intention of opening the door, nor did they look outside through their own peephole.
What kind of joke was this? Did that thing outside really think it could fool them?
It was true that the thing outside had perfectly copied Asagiri's voice and tone. But based on their brief contact with him, Asagiri was not the type to co knocking on their door so enthusiastically just to remind them that the carpet had returned to normal.
They were Players who had survived to the Third Floor. How could they be tricked that easily?
After hamring on the door for more than ten seconds, the fake Shadow seed to realize the people inside would not open up. Its body twisted and writhed, unraveling back into long strips of flesh, then rapidly slithered away into the distance. Within a few seconds, it had disappeared completely.
Asagiri did not move away from the peephole. He continued observing while sorting through his thoughts.
From what had just happened, one thing was already clear. Those flesh strip things possessed the ability to disguise themselves as humans, and they were not mindless. They had enough intelligence to notice that he had made contact with the three Players in the opposite room, so they deliberately chose to imitate him and knock on their door.
But that made the situation even stranger.
When the flesh strips first took human form, they had appeared right outside Room 7012, the room where Asagiri's four person team was staying. Yet they had not chosen to knock on his door. Instead, they crossed the hall and knocked on the opposite room.
If they had been irrational monsters, it could have been written off as random behavior or pure coincidence. But since they clearly had so intelligence, then that had been a deliberate choice.
Why had they made it?
Was there a limit to how many tis they could knock each ti they appeared? Or had they judged that because Rooms 7011 and 7012 were so close together, any sound made while disguising themselves near 7012 would definitely be heard from the opposite room, so they chose the three Players in 7011 because they seed easier to deceive?
If it was the second possibility, then did that an the thing could sense the Players' ntal state and pick easier targets accordingly?
And if soone had been alone in that room, what would it have done then?
Would it have simply pushed the door open and forced those flesh strips through the gap?
Asagiri knew that the public hints in a Dungeon would vary depending on the Player. The last ti they ca to the Hotel Dungeon, Yuuki Asuna's public hint had been to avoid direct confrontation with the Banshee, while his own had been to end the battle quickly.
But this ti, the public hints he and Yuuki Asuna received were exactly the sa.
If the system had not changed the way it distributed hints, then that ant even soone like him would be in danger if he acted alone.
And more importantly...
Asagiri still did not understand what the actual danger was in looking at the corridor through the peephole.
The scene just now had certainly looked like sothing out of a horror film. In fact, for an ordinary person, it would have been even worse than that. But for Players who had already survived several dangerous Dungeons, it was not especially terrifying. Let alone for him and Iwanaga Kotoko, who simply did not scare that easily.
So was it because the Dungeon had only just begun, and the real danger had not surfaced yet? Or had he already been ntally contaminated to so extent without realizing it?
Human Asura could nullify any type of ntal attack. Even so, the system had still judged his ntal strength before giving him that special hint.
So was the danger not ntal in nature?
Or was it...
...not an attack at all?
About ten minutes later, Asagiri saw the carpet outside gradually return to its original color.
He did not go out imdiately. Instead, he stepped back from the door, turned around, and said softly to Yuuki Asuna and the others,
"The dangerous period is over."
Of course, Asagiri had considered the possibility that the carpet returning to normal was itself a trap, sothing ant to trick the Players inside into making a sound.
But the logic remained the sa.
The ga system was not the type to kill Players for no reason when they had done nothing wrong. If even he could not tell whether the carpet returning to normal was fake, then what other Player could? Even on the Third Floor, the Dungeon would not present an unsolvable situation like that.
Besides, simply observing the carpet through the peephole was already a risky action in itself.
After Asagiri finished describing what he had seen, Yuuki Asuna, Iwanaga Kotoko, and Kato gumi all fell into thought. And like him, they all found one point especially strange.
It was not that the difficulty felt too high.
It was that the difficulty felt too low.
A strange entity that imitated a Player's appearance, knocked on the door, and tried to trick the people inside into opening it?
That was way too childish.
Not to ntion the fact that the thing outside was obviously a monster. Even if it had been a real Player, the people inside the room would never have opened the door on their own initiative.
"If it were one of us outside the door, and the rest of us were inside, then even knowing it was probably fake, we might still choose to open it," Iwanaga Kotoko said, organizing her thoughts. "But for it to disguise itself as a stranger and knock on the door like that... that's just too childish. No one would fall for it."
Kato gumi nodded gently.
"Yes. If this is all it can do, then it really doesn't match the difficulty of a Third Floor Dungeon at all."
Just as the four of them were discussing it, commotion suddenly broke out in the corridor outside.
Asagiri walked to the door, opened it, and stepped outside.
The mont he did, he heard a sharp whooshing sound from the left.
Thud!
Asagiri casually raised his left hand and caught a blur in midair. The shaft trembled slightly, humming from the force it still carried.
"S sorry..."
The female Player who had fired the arrow clearly had not expected soone to suddenly walk out of the room and stand directly in its path. She instinctively apologized, then imdiately froze as realization hit her. Disbelief spread across her face.
Wait.
That Player in the long black trench coat and dark gray mask had not dodged, had not even flinched, and had simply caught the arrow barehanded?
Was that even human?
At the sa ti, one of the male Players beside her looked past Asagiri toward a figure sprinting for the far end of the corridor. Anxiety flashed across his face as he shouted,
"Damn it, he's getting away..."
Before he could finish, Iwanaga Kotoko stepped out of the Hotel room. She extended her right hand toward the fleeing Player, and a strange light flashed in her dark purple eyes. Two pale arms suddenly burst from the floor, clamping onto the man's ankles and sending him crashing down.
In the next instant, the five Players farther down the corridor felt their vision blur. They could not even see what had happened before Yuuki Asuna, draped in her dark red cloak, appeared with terrifying speed and pressed the tip of her rapier against the fleeing Player's back, right over his heart.
Snap.
Asagiri casually broke the arrow in his hand and tossed the pieces aside. Then he looked at the four wary Players in the distance and said calmly,
"Start explaining."
This team consisted of two won and two n.
One of the won looked to be around twenty, the archer who had just apologized. The other seed to be in her late twenties and had the air of an office worker. Both n looked to be in their thirties.
At first glance, this four person team seed more professional than Mr. Ichikawa's group of three. One of the n carried a shield and a broadsword. The woman in her late twenties held no weapon, but she wore a light purple robe that was clearly system certified equipnt.
After a few seconds of silence, the woman in the light purple robe took two steps forward. She apologized first.
"I'm sorry. I nearly injured you just now."
"No need," Asagiri replied with a faint smile. "It wasn't nearly. It wasn't even close."
Hearing those slightly arrogant words, the woman did not take them as empty boasting. After all, she had just seen him catch the arrow with his bare hand. And the appearance of his two companions afterward had only made the gap in strength between both sides even more obvious.
"It happened like this," the woman explained, raising her hand and pointing at the Player whose back was pinned under Yuuki Asuna's rapier. "When we ca out of our room, we saw this guy leaving the room next door by himself. We asked whether he had teammates, and he couldn't answer. Then he suddenly tried to run. Combined with the public hints in this Dungeon, isn't that obviously suspicious?"
"You're talking nonsense!"
The Player on the ground tried to turn over, but the pain from the rapier biting into his back forced him to stay still. He could not even turn his head. All he could do was shout angrily,
"How was I supposed to know what kind of Players you four were? If I run into strangers, how can I not run? Besides, I went out to look for teammates, but I couldn't find any solo Players at all. I even knocked on your room first, and you wouldn't let in. Now that I finally survived, you're saying that's my fault?"
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
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