Chapter 73: Please Die For Me
Asuna didn't hesitate. She spun and rushed back into the morgue, reaching for the door.
First, close it.
She didn't know whether a thin metal door could actually hold back a swarm, but she was certain of one thing. In that single moment, at least a hundred zombies had poured into the corridor.
Fighting them in that narrow hallway was suicide. Even Human Asura would struggle to withstand that kind of impact at their current stage. Worse, if Human Asura got torn apart, Asagiri wouldn't have a window to resummon it.
The only chance was…
"Leader, use that item!"
The only answer Asuna could think of was the Hourglass of Reversal. Turn time back one minute. It was a red epic item, and using it like this would feel like burning money, but she couldn't see another solution fast enough.
Then Asagiri did something she never would have predicted.
He yanked open the morgue drawer labeled "Vomiter," the one with the corresponding notes. When he saw it was empty, he clicked his tongue.
"No bile sample. Forget it. Hopefully this can do something similar."
Before Asuna, Kotoko, and Megumi could even process what he meant, Asagiri sprinted out of the morgue.
And he closed the door behind him.
"Asagiri!"
Whenever Asuna stopped using his code name and called him by name, it meant she was truly rattled.
She lunged for the handle, trying to throw the door open and chase him, only for Kotoko to catch her wrist.
"He's not the type to throw his life away," Kotoko said, voice steady. "If he went out alone, he has a better solution."
"But…" Asuna's throat tightened.
Even through the door, she felt the corridor tremble. The roars and footfalls were getting clearer by the second, like a wave about to slam into the metal.
Before she could force another word out, Kotoko shook her head.
"Believe in him."
…
Outside, Asagiri faced the horde.
Less than ten meters away, a wall of bodies surged forward. Rotten mouths gaped. Arms clawed. The air was thick with a damp, sour stench.
Asagiri's expression didn't change.
He glanced sideways once and murmured, "Ten meters… that should be about right."
Then he turned, and a glass bottle appeared in his right hand.
He smashed it against the wall.
The bottle shattered with a crisp crack. Transparent liquid spilled out in a steady stream, and an aggressive stench of alcohol flooded the corridor.
"Come on."
Asagiri backed away, holding the broken bottle as the liquid continued to pour. He smiled at the oncoming swarm.
"Hurry up. Dinner's served."
He didn't actually need to lure them. Even if the infected weren't known for keen senses, the sharp alcohol fumes and Asagiri's constant movement were more than enough to drag their attention onto him.
"Five meters… three… two…"
He retreated, counting in his head. When he reached roughly twenty meters from the morgue, the closest zombies were already within arm's length, jaws opening wide, desperate to bite into the moving meal in front of them.
"Here."
Asagiri stopped.
A black summoning device snapped into his hand and pressed to his temple.
"Persona. Human Asura!"
Human Asura manifested in an instant, towering like a wall. One arm shielded Asagiri. The other smashed outward, swatting away the first wave of zombies trying to latch onto him.
Asagiri didn't retreat.
Under Human Asura's protection, he advanced instead, forcing his way into the horde.
"One meter… three… five… ten."
He drove ten meters deep.
Human Asura, already bitten in multiple places, swung both arms and carved out a brief pocket of space, barely a meter wide, around Asagiri. Bodies stumbled back. Teeth snapped in empty air.
Then Human Asura vanished.
In its place appeared a Tarot card glowing faintly, stamped with the image of the Grim Reaper.
It spun, drifting down into Asagiri's palm.
He crushed it without hesitation.
"Persona."
"Alice."
A girl appeared, golden hair and blue eyes, a dress neat enough to look wrong in this corridor of corpses. She hugged a teddy bear to her chest, smiling sweetly, as if she'd stepped out of a storybook rather than into a nightmare.
She looked at the surrounding swarm, still wearing that pure, innocent expression.
Then, in a soft voice that didn't match the scene at all, she asked politely.
"Could you please die for me?"
…
Inside the morgue, Asuna pressed her ear against the cold metal door, breathing shallowly.
"The sound… why did it stop?"
The roars and footfalls that had been swelling like a storm vanished within seconds.
In their place came a series of muffled thuds.
Then…
Silence.
An eerie, dead silence.
Asuna's stomach turned.
What happened?
Did Asagiri… die?
No. That was impossible. If he'd been overwhelmed, the Hourglass of Reversal would have triggered immediately. It couldn't just turn into this.
"Open the door."
Kotoko's calm voice cut through Asuna's spiraling thoughts.
Asuna nodded stiffly and pulled the door open.
The moment they stepped out, both Asuna and Megumi froze so hard they nearly forgot to breathe.
The corridor was carpeted in bodies.
The swarm that had looked like locusts moments ago was gone. Their corpses were piled almost half a meter high, clogging the hallway from wall to wall.
And walking toward them, unharmed, was Asagiri.
His clothes weren't torn. His posture wasn't even messy. He moved as if strolling down a normal street, stepping along a path paved by dead infected.
"What… is this…" Asuna whispered.
"As expected." Kotoko smiled, eyes on Asagiri. "You summoned Alice, didn't you?"
"Yes."
Asagiri reached them, then hopped lightly down from the pile of corpses.
His tone was calm, almost casual.
"Zombies have weak mental resistance, and they love crowding together. They're basically made for Alice's ability." He paused, as if remembering something only mildly interesting. "Oh, and there was a Special Infected in the swarm. A Charger. One arm ridiculously thick, the other thin and twisted. It got deleted instantly too."
Asuna and Megumi finally remembered.
Asagiri didn't only have Human Asura. He also had Alice, the one he'd subdued in the last Hotel Dungeon.
And Alice's exclusive skill…
[Please Die For Me: When you summon Alice, you can consume a large amount of mental energy to have her perform a curse attribute attack centered on you, targeting all targets within a ten meter radius excluding yourself. If any target fails the mental check and does not possess immunity to curse type attacks, they will die instantly.]
Earlier, Kotoko's test had already confirmed it. Ordinary infected didn't just have low mental resistance. Their resistance was practically negative. Even Curse Gaze, which normally only caused interference, could outright kill them.
Please Die For Me was a wide area instant kill that checked mental resistance.
And unlike Asuna's Stinger, it wasn't directional. It didn't form a ten meter line. It formed a ten meter sphere centered on Asagiri.
That meant the logic behind his actions was terrifyingly clean.
He had deliberately rushed into the horde, precisely calculated the distance, and positioned himself so zombies were within ten meters in every direction. After all, whether there were five targets or fifty, the mental energy cost was the same.
So the optimal play was to wipe as many as possible in one activation.
"So that's what you did…" Asuna breathed.
Then she asked, unable to stop herself, "You went out alone because you were worried Alice's skill might hit the three of us too?"
"That was part of it," Asagiri admitted.
For a split second, Asuna felt something warm in her chest.
Then he added with a grin, "The Big Three were hard to gather. Let's not have me accidentally delete them."
"You…" Asuna's eye twitched. "Be serious!"
She scolded him, but her body moved closer anyway. She stared at his face, searching for anything wrong, her voice dropping.
"You burned a huge amount of mental energy. Are you okay?"
Asagiri nodded lightly. "A little dizzy, but I'm fine. Human Asura didn't get destroyed this time either, so I didn't take extra stamina and mental strain from a resummon."
"Then rest a bit," Asuna urged.
"No need."
He waved it off, tone relaxed. "My condition isn't that bad. Better to clear the Dungeon fast and lock in a high evaluation. And besides…"
His gaze slid down the corpse filled corridor, then back toward the stairwell opening.
"Let's not overthink why the horde showed up or why those zombies were so fast, for now. From a game mechanics perspective, their sudden appearance means one of two things."
His smile thinned, turning sharp.
"Either we triggered a penalty we weren't supposed to trigger, or, like the last Hotel Dungeon where we had to deal with the bound spirits on the seventh floor before reaching the fifth floor for the Exorcist Longsword…"
He paused.
"This is a hidden reward route. And the difficulty finally matched the value of what's waiting for us."
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