Asuna didn't hesitate, immediately retreating into the morgue, intending to slam the door shut. She wasn't sure if the metal door would hold against so many zombies, but she knew for certain that hundreds had swarmed in instantly. Fighting them in a narrow corridor was suicide. Even Asagiri's Human Asura wouldn't withstand such an impact at this stage, and once it was destroyed, he'd have no window to resummon it.
Their only chance was...
"Leader, use that item!"
The Reverse Hourglass was their last resort. Using a red epic quality item felt wasteful, but Asuna couldn't think of anything else.
However, Asagiri's next actions completely defied her expectations. He first pulled open the metal bed compartment labeled "Boomer," saw it was empty, and muttered, "No bile sample... Forget it, hopefully that thing can serve a similar purpose."
Then, to the utter shock of Asuna, Kotoko, and Megumi, Asagiri rushed out of the morgue and even closed the door behind him.
"Asagiri!" When Asuna forgot his code name, it meant she was truly flustered. She ran to the door, desperate to open it and chase after him, but Kotoko stopped her.
"He's not someone who likes to seek death. Since he went out himself, it means he must have thought of a better solution."
"But…" Feeling the ground tremble and hearing the increasingly clear zombie roars and footsteps through the metal door, Asuna's anxiety flared.
Before she could speak, Kotoko shook her head gently. "Believe in him."
On the other side, Asagiri, who had willingly stepped into the corridor, faced a dense zombie horde less than ten meters away. There was no panic on his face. Instead, he first glanced to the other side and muttered, "Ten meters... That distance should be about right."
Immediately after, Asagiri turned around without hesitation, a glass bottle appearing in his right hand. He deliberately smashed the bottle against the wall. As the transparent liquid flowed out, a pungent smell of alcohol filled the air.
"Come on." Asagiri retreated backward, holding the continuously leaking bottle of medical alcohol. Looking at the zombie horde, he said with a smile, "Hurry up, dinner is served."
He didn't need to explicitly attract them. The pungent smell of alcohol and Asagiri's constant movement had already fully captured their attention.
"Five meters... three meters... one meter..." Asagiri retreated, silently calculating the distance. When he was about twenty meters from the morgue, the nearest, ferocious-faced zombies were less than two meters away, their foul-smelling mouths agape, eager to tear into the delicious meal before them.
"Here." At this critical moment, Asagiri suddenly stopped. Immediately after, a black summoning device appeared in his hand, pointing at his temple.
"Persona, Human Asura!"
The tall Human Asura instantly appeared, one arm shielding Asagiri, the other swatting away the biting zombies. After summoning Human Asura, Asagiri didn't retreat. Instead, under its protection, he advanced, charging directly into the zombie horde.
"One meter, three meters, five meters... ten meters." After penetrating ten meters into the zombie horde, Human Asura, its body bitten in multiple places, swung its arms, temporarily repelling the surrounding zombies and clearing a one-meter radius around Asagiri.
The next second, Human Asura's figure vanished, replaced by a faintly glowing Tarot card, imprinted with the image of the Grim Reaper. The card spun and gently landed in Asagiri's palm. He crushed it without hesitation and whispered,
"Persona,Alice."
The instant Asagiri's words fell, Alice, in her dress, with golden hair and blue eyes, and holding a teddy bear doll, appeared. Facing the terrifying zombie groups on both sides, her face held a pure, innocent, sweet smile.
"Could you please die for me?" she asked in a soft, sweet voice.
Inside the morgue, Asuna pressed her ear against the cold metal door, listening. "The sound... why did it disappear?" She was a mix of nervous and worried. The noise, originally a cacophony of zombie roars and footsteps, had suddenly ceased within seconds. What followed was a series of muffled thuds, and then... an eerie silence.
What exactly happened? Could it be... Asagiri died? That was impossible. If he had died in the zombie horde, the Hourglass of Reversal should have been triggered immediately. How could it turn into this situation?
"Open the door." Hearing Kotoko's words, Asuna nodded and immediately pulled the door to the corridor open. However, the scene that greeted them left both her and Megumi completely stunned, unable to believe their eyes.
The zombies that were like locusts just moments ago now lie lifeless. Their bodies were piled up nearly half a meter high, covering the entire corridor floor. And Asagiri was in a nearby spot, completely unharmed, not even a crease out of place on his clothes. He was simply walking towards them, step by step, treading on the path paved by the corpses.
"What in the world is this..."
"As expected." While Asuna and Megumi were still in shock, Kotoko looked at Asagiri, who was walking towards them step by step, and said with a smile, "You summoned Alice, right?"
"Yes."
Asagiri walked closer, gently jumped down from the pile of corpses, and said in a calm tone, "Zombies have weak mental resistance and like to crowd together, which makes it really suitable for using Alice's ability. Oh right, there seemed to be a special infected among the horde, the kind of Charger with one extremely thick arm and the other thin and deformed. It was also instantly killed by Alice's ability."
Hearing this, Asuna and Megumi finally recalled that Asagiri didn't only have the Human Asura Persona, but also Alice, whom he had subdued in the last Hotel instance. 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's mental energy fails the check and they do not have immunity to curse-type attacks, they will die instantly.]
Through Kotoko's skill test earlier, the team members already knew that infected, meaning zombies, didn't have high mental resistance. The mental resistance of ordinary infected could even be said to be negative, allowing the Curse Gaze, which was originally only meant to cause interference, to achieve an instant kill effect.
Coincidentally, "Please Die For Me" is a large-area instant kill attack that checks the enemy's mental resistance. Moreover, the range of this skill is completely different from Asuna's Stinger skill range. It doesn't select a direction or a ten-meter line, but forms a three-dimensional sphere with a radius of ten meters centered on Asagiri himself.
Asagiri had just voluntarily charged into the zombie horde and calculated the ten-meter distance precisely to ensure there were zombies within ten meters in front and behind him, maximizing the range of Alice's skill. After all, no matter how many enemies were within the range, the mental energy consumed by summoning Alice and using her exclusive skill was the same. It was certainly more reasonable to try to eliminate all the zombies with just one use.
"So that's how it is..."
Asuna finally understood and then asked curiously, "You just rushed out voluntarily. Were you worried that Alice's skill would affect the three of us?"
"That was part of the consideration." Hearing Asagiri's words, before Asuna could even feel touched, she heard him add with a smile, "The 'Big Three' that were so hard to gather, let's not have me accidentally kill them off."
"You... be serious!" Asuna first said this in exasperation, then paused for a moment. She couldn't help but lean closer to Asagiri, staring at his face, her eyes showing concern, and said softly with worry, "You consumed a large amount of mental energy. Are you okay now?"
Asagiri nodded and replied with a smile, "A bit dizzy, but overall I'm OK. After all, the Human Asura wasn't destroyed this time, so it didn't consume extra stamina and mental energy."
"Then how about resting a bit?"
"No need." Asagiri waved his hand, saying nonchalantly, "My condition hasn't been affected too much. It's better to clear the instance as quickly as possible and get a high-level clearance rating, and besides..."
Pausing here, Asagiri then continued, "Let's not consider why the zombie horde appeared or why those zombies moved so fast for now. Just thinking from the perspective of game mechanics, the reason for their sudden appearance is either that we did something wrong and triggered a penalty level that shouldn't have appeared, or, like in the last Hotel instance where we had to pass the bound spirits on the Seventh Floor to reach the Fifth Floor where the Exorcist Longsword was stored, there are hidden rewards here, which is why a difficulty corresponding to the reward's value appeared."