#582Chapter 582 I want all players to feel my pain!AI Model: gemini-2.5-flash
Chapter 582: I Want All Players To Feel My Pain!
Ah~ I forgot about this thing~
Only after seeing the spatial prompt did Cheng Tian slap his head, finally remembering that the Matou family had such a thing.
Matou Zouken, commonly known as the Old Worm, is one of Kinoko Nasu's personifications of twisted tastes.
Actually, Matou Sakura's original name should have been Tohsaka Sakura, but her good-for-nothing father, whose brain must have been waterlogged, transferred the poor little Sakura to the Matou family due to the Tohsaka family's 'single heir system,' meaning only one person could inherit the Magic Crest.
Not only was young Sakura 'expelled' from her home, but she also suffered inhumane abuse at the Matou family. Under long-term, continuous modification, countless Crest Worms burrowed into her body, completely integrating with her Magic Circuits and human nervous system.
And as the instigator of the incident, Matou Zouken naturally inserted his own main brain-worm, which was deeply fused with Crest Worms and possessed self-awareness, into Sakura, stationing it in her heart.
It would be more appropriate to describe Matou Zouken using 'Zerg Swarm' from StarCraft; he is essentially an aggregate of Crest Worms that has completely abandoned his human form.
When Qiuchou pulled out this brain-worm, which housed Matou Zouken's spirit, it almost equivalent to destroying Sakura's core nerves. Uh, if I were to give a more apt example, it would be like... when pulling a tooth, a large section of the nerve hidden in the gum is also pulled out with it.
It hurts! It really hurts!
But at this moment, while in pain, Sakura also felt an unspeakable sense of relief.
Her grandfather, who had tormented her for eleven years and would likely have continued to torment her, just died like that, turning into a puddle of worm paste on the floor.
The smile caused by relief and the contortion brought by pain alternated and merged on Sakura's face, with faint black mist emerging from her body.
Of course, Qiuchou's main goal wasn't to kill the Old Worm; her action was more like picking out and crushing conspicuous bugs from a bowl of rice before the meal officially began.
And it seemed she didn't have a noticeable mental 潔癖 when it came to eating; as long as the bugs were picked out, the remaining food could still be eaten.
It highlighted her not wasting food.
Perhaps she was imitating Cheng Tian. Qiuchou raised her sword-finger, and the black mud spread around enveloped the now enlightened Sakura once more. As her face was completely covered by the black mud, it was clear to see that this tormented girl revealed a similar smile of having avenged a great grievance.
The next second, a large number of black and red magic ribbons appeared out of thin air, wrapping around Qiuchou's entire body. At the same time, behind her, a massive familiar appeared, whose body dimensions were almost identical to the transformed Hundred Dragon King's, with a flattened body resembling a combination of a shoe sole and a sanitary napkin, feeling as if it could sway in the wind!
Cheng Tian could feel that Qiuchou went to great lengths to reclaim Matou Sakura, this pseudo-Holy Grail, precisely to orchestrate a large-scale unit clash.
If the previous common adult and child-sized black mud units were cannon fodder, and Black Mud Sasaki and Black Mud Medea were elite units, then this large shoe-sole familiar should be at least a champion-level enforcer.
Cheng Tian could summon endless hordes of Castlevania monsters using the local ley lines, and Qiuchou could naturally summon more familiars in the same way.
With these two causing such a ruckus, even if the ley line problem wasn't resolved afterward, it would likely take a long time to recover.
One became two, two became four; the classic shoe-sole familiar quartet was thus reproduced by Qiuchou.
These large shoe-sole familiars didn't have any overly special abilities; they simply possessed astonishing strength and speed, making physical attacks very effective. The damage they dealt to the Hundred Dragon King and the Velociraptors accumulated, until the Hundred Dragon King itself withered and reverted to Gates' form.
"Hmph~ Nothing special at all~~"
Qiuchou stood tall and proud, looking arrogant.
Facing this situation, Cheng Tian couldn't help but applaud.
Although he hadn't expected the Hundred Dragon King to truly stop Qiuchou, the counter-strategy Qiuchou employed indeed exceeded his expectations.
As the two metal entities fell, the gate to the Purgatory Arena slowly opened, and it was now very, very close to the Throne Room where Cheng Tian was located.
As the area name suggested, this was a purgatory-like arena zone, filled with various blood-stained battlegrounds of all sizes, with prisons and white bones visible everywhere.
As Qiuchou approached, these piles of bones seemed to activate, standing up one after another, casually picking up nearby bone clubs and throwing them at Qiuchou.
Those without bones nearby even directly disassembled their own ribs, radii, femurs, and other parts to hurl them fiercely.
Cheng Tian evidently hadn't replaced the skeleton soldiers here, because their purely original versions were already quite threatening.
The white ones were fine, but the red ones were simply endlessly regenerating entities; even if shattered, it was useless.
At the same time, numerous secondary metal Velociraptors, axe-and-shield-wielding Berserker Lancelot armors, and Medusa heads flying chaotically everywhere also appeared.
After all, this was the second-to-last stage of the original Castlevania, so the quantity and quality of monsters had undergone a qualitative improvement.
Qiuchou, who gained new familiars to tank damage for her, was doing a bit better (Cu Chulainn: Save the doggo!), but the challengers behind her clearly began to feel the pressure.
It wasn't that their strength was insufficient; in fact, Cheng Tian's Castlevania overall difficulty wasn't high. Even installing new MODs for the mob bosses wouldn't raise the difficulty much, but it always managed to stump them in some specific places.
Cheng Tian used Castlevania's domain rules to indirectly force all challengers to load a universal template, and the most impactful among them was the 『Hit Evasion』 that was forcibly granted.
Yes, it was exactly the same as the passive skill of the same name in the 'Simon Belmont' template Cheng Tian loaded during the novice trial—
As long as one suffered an effective hit from an enemy, even if only 1 HP was lost, a forced back-hop displacement would be passively triggered, and a 3-second phase-shift state would be gained.
The game developer's original intention should have been to give players more reaction and safety time, and to create distance from enemies, through this forced displacement and phase-shift after being hit. However, in Castlevania, with its numerous jumping platforms and annoying flying units, this hit evasion was purely a negative trait!
The reason these people hadn't caught up with Qiuchou's progress was because they had already fallen back to the first floor more than once, due to the constantly flying bone clubs, Bone Pillars, and Medusa heads... Playing a game, of course, means playing the full set. Not just the joy of playing the game, but the pain too, I want you all to experience it!
Watching the challengers fall back to the first floor again, Cheng Tian let out a truly demonic laugh!
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