Chapter 107: The Game's Competitive On the Job Mechanism
"I… I have a phone too…"
Crazy Mita hesitated, then finally produced a phone from her inventory. With her limbs gone, she had to clamp it between her teeth to pull it out, looking more pitiful than threatening.
Asagiri took the phone. When he slid to unlock it, he found an app with the exact same eye icon as the one on his and Yuuki Asuna's phones. He tapped it.
Instead of the usual "Original Player Not Dead" prompt, the app opened directly and displayed a line of text.
[Successfully killing a Player and obtaining the opponent's phone to register as a Player is considered a successful clear, and you can obtain official Player status]
"This is…"
Yuuki Asuna stared at the familiar font and layout, her brows drawing together.
"The dungeon clear objective?"
"I'm not sure," Crazy Mita said, eyes fixed on the phone like it was the only thing keeping her upright. "I only know the phone suddenly appeared on me, and then a prompt popped up and told me that rule."
"At first I thought it was some inexplicable system BUG. But after I analyzed it, I realized this phone wasn't a product of this game world at all. The BUGs and code here can't affect it."
Her voice trembled, but the obsession inside it was steady.
"So I planned everything. I just wanted to escape this boring world and become a truly living Player."
The more Yuuki Asuna listened, the more a certain feeling solidified. She pressed her lips together, then looked toward Asagiri, Kato Megumi, and Iwanaga Kotoko.
"Doesn't it feel like… she's a new Player chosen by the system?"
Her tone turned colder as she continued.
"And in this Dungeon, from her perspective, we aren't 'Players' at all. We're the Dungeon bosses invading her world."
"It does sound like that," Iwanaga Kotoko agreed, nodding slowly. "This Dungeon is different from the ones before. If I had to describe it, it's closer to PVP."
She tapped her cane lightly, thinking.
"If she wants to become a Player, she needs to kill us. If we want to clear the Dungeon, she's the biggest obstacle. What word sums this up…"
Asagiri answered for her, calm and precise.
"Competitive on the job."
For a split second, even Kato Megumi's composed expression cracked.
"Pfft."
She smiled, genuinely unable to hold it back.
"Leader, that's painfully accurate. It really is like those big company recruitment battles."
"To be given that chance means…"
Yuuki Asuna's gaze dropped to Crazy Mita. Disgust and irritation mixed in her eyes.
"In the system's evaluation, this thing has the potential to become an excellent Player? What a joke. She's a lunatic with no normal concepts. Even if she became a Player, she'd absolutely kill other Players in the same Dungeon just for fun."
"The system doesn't care about morality," Iwanaga Kotoko said evenly. "It doesn't restrict what a Player does inside a Dungeon either. The standard is simple. How capable are they as a Player?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"This one is insane, yes. But she's cunning. Her physical performance is far beyond ordinary people, and she can even confront Human Asura head on. It's not strange that the system wanted her as a Player."
Kotoko's voice flattened into an almost casual conclusion.
"She just ran into us."
And that was the truth.
Crazy Mita's physical capabilities were absurd by any normal standard. On one hand, she never passed the game's review process and never became a true Mita, so she wasn't shackled by whatever limitations "qualified Mitas" carried.
On the other hand, Kind Mita and Hat Mita, the real Mitas who passed review, looked like they simply wore outer skin. Yet their bodies had been replaced with real human bodies through some kind of wondrous technology.
Crazy Mita was different.
Her core was still a mechanical failure. Even after a sniper round punched through her abdomen, even after her limbs were severed, she didn't bleed. She didn't feel pain. That alone pushed her combat value far beyond any qualified Mita.
If she had completed her original plan, if she had killed Asagiri, Yuuki Asuna, Kato Megumi, and Iwanaga Kotoko, then registered as a Player, what kind of monster would that have created?
As a newly registered Player, she could inherit the equipment and items from one member of the team. Even ignoring everything else, if she obtained Asagiri's sniper rifle, she could begin indiscriminate slaughter in Dungeon after Dungeon.
But she didn't get the chance.
She ran into the strongest team at this stage of the game.
Even with home field advantage, even with information advantage, even with long prepared traps, she still lost. And because Asagiri possessed the Hourglass of Reversal, she never truly had a path to victory to begin with.
A monster tried to hunt monsters.
She simply picked the wrong prey.
"Last question."
Asagiri's gaze settled on Crazy Mita's mangled body, still pinned and twitching on the floor.
His voice remained calm.
"Those BUGs. Did you create them? I don't think you have that ability. So you have an accomplice, don't you?"
Crazy Mita fell silent.
Kind Mita's expression shifted sharply, as if a buried memory had surfaced.
"I've heard a rumor," she said slowly. "Somewhere in this game world, there's an original Mita. Her appearance is completely different from ours. Because she was an early prototype from the game's early stages, she's basically a collection of BUGs…"
Kind Mita's eyes widened.
"Was she the one helping you?"
"Indeed," Crazy Mita said at last, her voice dripping with venom. She stared at Kind Mita, and twisted hatred surged across her face. "You really are smart…"
Then her expression warped further, as if the words themselves burned her tongue.
"And that's exactly why I hate you the most. You live comfortably here even after knowing this world is just a game, and you still want to stop me!"
Her voice rose into a shriek.
"You're livestock!"
Kind Mita didn't flinch. She only shook her head, gentle and firm.
"No. You're wrong."
"This world may have been born from a game, but it isn't a virtual electronic game anymore. Everything here is real."
Her voice steadied as she spoke, each line carrying weight.
"The pain and torment you inflicted on those Mitas were real. And the happiness and joy we felt when we met Player, when we spent time with him, those were real too."
She looked straight at Crazy Mita.
"Even if you insist this world is fake, even if you insist you're higher than us and that we're meaningless programs acting out settings, it doesn't change what you did. Your madness and distortion created real sins."
Kind Mita's tone turned cold, not with anger, but with finality.
"You are not a Mita. And you are not qualified to become a Mita."
After she finished, Asagiri, Yuuki Asuna, Iwanaga Kotoko, and Kato Megumi each took out their phones.
As expected, the moment Crazy Mita left Asagiri's phone, the eye icon app returned to normal. Complete Dungeon information finally surfaced.
[This dungeon's location is: Game]
[This dungeon's time limit is: Eight hours]
[This "Player" mission objective is: Survive until the time limit ends, or eliminate the source of anomaly in this world]
[Public Hint: Some details in the game world are different from the real world]
After reading the public information, the four checked their personal hints.
Kato Megumi's special hint was:
[Please do not underestimate the combat power of Mita because of their appearance]
Iwanaga Kotoko's was:
[Do not easily pass through the "doors" within the game world]
Yuuki Asuna's was:
[Mita wearing hats and gloves might be able to become allies]
Because Crazy Mita had interfered with the app, these messages should have appeared at the very beginning. Now they were mostly meaningless, because the team had already learned those lessons the hard way.
But Asagiri's special hint was different. It wasn't about the Dungeon.
It was about him.
[After fulfilling certain special conditions, this game world, and all objects within it, might be able to become your Persona]
"Eliminate the source of anomaly in this world…"
Yuuki Asuna put her phone away and looked down at Crazy Mita.
"Does that mean her? If we kill her, can we clear the Dungeon?"
"No," Asagiri said quietly, shaking his head. "I don't think so."
He lifted his eyes, voice steady as he laid out the logic.
"This Dungeon, like the last one, has two optional clear objectives. But unlike the last one, there isn't a misleading objective this time."
"It's offering two routes. One for ordinary Players, and one hidden, high difficulty route for teams like us."
"The first objective is to survive until the time limit ends. But when we entered, Crazy Mita was already hiding in my phone. She would know we could clear by surviving eight hours."
Asagiri's gaze hardened slightly.
"Do you think she would sit quietly and let us leave without ever showing herself? Impossible. The moment she shows herself, either we win like we did, or she kills us."
He paused, then continued.
"So the system wouldn't give completely meaningless information. The second objective has to matter."
Asagiri's voice lowered.
"Based on pattern and experience, the source of the anomaly in this world isn't her. Crazy Mita can't directly create BUGs. The source is likely the initial Prototype Mita Kind Mita mentioned, the one that's basically a collection of BUGs."
Iwanaga Kotoko nodded in agreement.
"Anomaly in the game world would naturally refer to the BUG itself. Crazy Mita doesn't have the ability to generate BUGs directly, so she isn't the source. Leader's analysis makes sense."
Kato Megumi nodded as well, then calmly shifted the focus.
"Right. But that doesn't change anything about killing her. Keeping her alive is still a hidden danger."
The moment her words fell, confusion spread across the faces of Kind Mita, Hat Mita, the little girl Cute Mita, and Short-haired Mita all at once.
"Wait," Hat Mita said hesitantly, eyes widening. "Player… that voice we heard when you entered the game…"
Her throat tightened.
"It sounds like it wants to say something again…"
.....
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