"That's good news."
Hearing Asagiri Utsunomiya's affirmation, Kotoko Iwanaga couldn't help but curve her lips upward, like a child showing off her achievements. She slightly raised her chin, looking smug, then spoke.
"Not only that. I can feel that, likely due to their low intelligence, these zombies' mental resistance, let alone compared to specters, is even worse than ordinary people. So my Gaze of Curses, which originally could only cause negative effects, can directly finish them off~ How about that, isn't it amazing?"
Asagiri Utsunomiya smiled, nodded, and said, "Amazing."
Kotoko Iwanaga got straight to the point, saying with a cunning smile, "Then, Captain, reward me by carrying me, okay? After all, my stamina isn't very good, plus I have a disability, and moving around is very difficult. You wouldn't have the heart to see me so pitiful, right?"
Asagiri Utsunomiya returned the smile, saying, "Morally blackmailing me? Fortunately, I have no morals, otherwise I would have really been blackmailed by you. Walk by yourself."
Seeing that her scheme didn't succeed, Kotoko Iwanaga muttered softly, "What an heartless guy..."
"Anyway, regarding the answer to this dungeon's mystery..." Asagiri Utsunomiya brought the conversation back to the original topic, then took out his phone, looked at the city map in detail, his gaze fell on the marker in the city center that said Benevolent Hospital, and finished his sentence calmly, "Maybe we'll find it here."
◆◇◈◇◆
After the four left the apartment building and came out onto the street, they found that within the range of their vision, there was no sign of any zombie at all. It wasn't the scene they imagined after the apocalypse, with zombies rampant on the streets, a pervasive stench of decay, like a living hell. Instead, it was a silent, lifeless dead city.
This strange sense of incongruity made Asuna Yuuki, Kotoko Iwanaga, and Megumi Kato, who had cleared dungeon twice before, feel that something was not right.
"Not a single zombie? This..." Asuna Yuuki muttered with a tight frown, 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 frustrating.
"Please always be vigilant of your surroundings... Wait a minute, what is this?"
Just as Asuna Yuuki was thinking about the Dungeon Public Hint, 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 Yuuki was observing, Asagiri Utsunomiya 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 Yuuki first asked, then raised her hand to tuck her long hair behind her ear and said thoughtfully. "Could it be that someone died here, and in a gruesome way where their body was torn open, so bile was left behind?"
Asagiri Utsunomiya shook his head, glanced at the surrounding ground, and said, "Not likely. There are no bloodstains on the surrounding ground, let alone body parts or internal organs."
Afterwards, Asagiri Utsunomiya paused for a moment, then stood up, looked at Asuna Yuuki, Kotoko Iwanaga, and Megumi Kato 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 apocalypse, 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 Iwanaga, leaning on her cane, first agreed with the points raised by Asagiri Utsunomiya, then began analyzing, "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, it must not be a coincidence, but rather the Game's arrangement. The only reasonable explanation is... the Game wants Players to go out and explore, which is why it provided a lot of information in the beginning, telling the Players that even if they encounter regular zombies, it won't be too dangerous as long as they handle the zombies carefully."
Megumi Kato asked cautiously, "Then... 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 mission objective..."
"Then they're dead." Asagiri Utsunomiya first finished it for Megumi Kato while shaking his head, then his voice turned flat as he explained, "This is not a novice dungeon; it won't be that easy to clear. Giving two different mission objectives seems like the Game is allowing the Players to choose freely, but in reality, it's precisely because there's a choice that there will be a lucky 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 rating and rewards. Such Players have no value to this Game."
"Then the second part of this challenge is this strange bile trace?" Asuna Yuuki first said, then seemed to have thought of something and asked for confirmation, "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 Mercy Hospital?"
"Yes, for ordinary Players, this is the most reasonable plan to achieve a high rating. But I want to verify something. Violet can also gain strength through killing, so..."
At this point, Asagiri Utsunomiya paused for a moment, showing an eager and excited expression, then continued:
"Let's go find those Special Infected."
◆◇◈◇◆
Nearly an hour later, in an underground parking lot.
"More bile... and the amount has significantly increased..." Asuna Yuuki first remarked as she looked at the large amount of yellowish-green viscous liquid attached to the ground, walls, and surrounding vehicles, then looked at Asagiri Utsunomiya beside her and said, "It seems we are very close now."
While tracking the bile traces and searching for the Special Infected just now, Asagiri Utsunomiya and the others had already determined their location.
The straight-line distance from the Mercy Hospital in the city center was about twenty kilometers. Even for ordinary people, if they sped up 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 Utsunomiya 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 Utsunomiya 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.
In 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 Yuuki first murmured, then tightened her grip on the handle of the Exorcist Longsword in her hand and was about to launch an attack when she was stopped by Asagiri Utsunomiya.
"Wait a moment, step back."
After saying that softly, Asagiri Utsunomiya led Asuna Yuuki, Kotoko Iwanaga, and Megumi Kato away silently, while raising his black gun-shaped summoner and aiming it at his temple.
"Per... so... na...
"Come forth, Hitoshura!"
The moment Hitoshura appeared, the bloated, big-bellied Special Infected seemed to sense the movement from this side. It slowly turned around and took one step towards where Asagiri Utsunomiya and the others were standing.
However, before it could take the next step, Hitoshura 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.
Soon after, there was a loud sound.
*Thump!!!*
Asuna Yuuki and Kotoko Iwanaga were both very familiar with this sound. They had heard a similar sound during the previous Haunted Hotel dungeon, when the bodies of the two suicidal Players exploded.
"Okay, solved."
Asagiri Utsunomiya canceled the summoning of Hitoshura, and because Persona was a power condensed from his inner strength, he could also sense the approximate destructive power generated when the bloated Special Infected exploded through Hitoshura.
Soon after, Asagiri Utsunomiya led Asuna Yuuki, Kotoko Iwanaga, and Megumi Kato to the back of the van. What they saw was a scene of utter chaos: body parts, fragments of internal organs, yellowish-green mucus, flesh and blood. These many disgusting things gathered together made both Asuna Yuuki and Megumi Kato instinctively turn their heads, unable to bear looking directly at the sight.
Kotoko Iwanaga, 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 that, Kotoko Iwanaga looked at Asagiri Utsunomiya and asked curiously, "You said before that you wanted to confirm something through the Special Infected. What was it?"
"It's this." As he said this, Asagiri Utsunomiya pointed to the ground.
Kotoko Iwanaga, Asuna Yuuki, and Megumi Kato 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 Iwanaga recognized the object at a glance, and her brows furrowed.
"...an implanted locator?"