Quueng—
Crazy crushing!
Hwoong—!
...
If I'd been a little off, I would've been crushed between its two eyes and turned into paste.
This ability to see "possibilities" is good and all, but it has more flaws than I expected.
Of course, there's no doubt it's an excellent ability when it shows every possibility the enemy can take here, but the problem is that it really does show everything!
"Whoa...!"
It was the same even now.
I'd hurriedly spotted and dodged the lashing tongue, but the possibility I saw still had three more variants: left eye, right eye, and both eyes!
If I looked at it wrong, I could even see possibilities from the past. In every way, it's seriously defective.
It doesn't matter too much, since the more certain the enemy is to take a specific action, the more certain the future possibilities become too, but...
When there's such a gap between the enemy's physical ability and mine, all I can do is scramble to avoid it.
Of course—
Hwoong, crunch—!
Whenever I had the room, I kept dodging and counterattacking, steadily stacking damage.
If that were all, there wouldn't have been a problem.
The fundamental issue with this fight was that, for some reason, the prisoners' strength was gradually slipping away.
...Eyes? Tongue?
Putting together the possibilities I'd glimpsed and the ones in front of me now, those two were probably the cause.
That said, I couldn't exactly tell the prisoners who weren't good at dodging to just evade it somehow... Guess there's no helping it.
I changed the stance I'd been holding all along for dodging.
And then—
Cheng——!!
I parried the attack.
If I stood directly in front of the enemy, its attacks wouldn't reach the prisoners whose strength was already fading.
For the time being, my role was to deflect every attack.
As long as I didn't make a mistake, I could do it.
"Hoo..."
Before long, a noise that was hard to believe came from fists colliding with eyes rolled across the battlefield.
Cheng! Cheng, cheng!
Left eye, right eye. Then the tongue.
Hwoong!
I dodged the two-eye crush by moving back quickly.
...That should about do one turn.
"Now! Attack it!"
As expected of Otis. Her judgment was sharp.
She'd immediately realized I was taking every attack head-on.
Then all we had to do was endure... just endure...
Well, yes, but if sheer willpower could do everything, we would've succeeded on the first mission.
Once might have been manageable. By the second and third times, mistakes started creeping in.
Thwack!
"Ghk..."
I managed to block one with my arm, but the tongue still landed cleanly.
Cheng, cheng, KWAANG!!
Then, while I was flailing with my weakened body to block somehow, I got smashed by an eyeball and sent flying backward.
Thanks to that, my body was a wreck.
Quueng...
Still, I'd managed to deal it a fair amount of damage too.
Even if I went down here, they'd probably be able to take it out without much trouble.
Anyway, it seemed my earlier assumption was a little off.
It wasn't just when I got hit—the thing was draining my strength just from hearing its cry too.
If I'd figured that out a little sooner, I might've been able to counter... maybe...
*
When I came to, we were already heading to the next station.
Looks like we didn't fail after all. Thank goodness.
"......"
"Hey, underling. I'd like to hear your excuse for that act of insubordination earlier."
"...I'm sorry."
" No need. It can happen once. In the end, we did have to fight."
Ishmael looked at Dante with a surprised expression.
...Was our Manager really that lacking in authority?
Either way, I should probably get my body back in shape first.
After the clock turned back, my mind was always half-reset and my body was left loose and sluggish.
"And you."
"Yes?"
Me?
"That was a rather decent tactic. Sometimes one person has to shoulder the burden."
Was that praise? It didn't feel bad.
"It was nothing."
[The next station is Station 4: Reunion. The next station is Station 4: Reunion.]
Oh, so it's already time to get off.
The next station's name was Reunion... didn't sound like it would be a pleasant one.
More likely, it was those damnable bastards again. We'd end up fighting them anyway.
*
We dealt with that bastard Guido, the N Corp personnel, and the Abnormality that spewed electricity and we'd seen a few times in the Mirror Dungeon and the thread dungeon.
There were casualties, but since we'd already fought those things several times in the Mirror Dungeon, once we got used to their altered physical abilities, they were easy enough to handle.
Of course, I'm not going to bother describing how some of them died in the process.
Let's get back on the train for now.
"Ugh... why is that crackling electric sound still going? Am I the weird one?"
"If I can hear it too, I don't think that's the case."
Sure enough, just as Rodion said, there was still the sound of current crackling inside the train.
For a moment I wondered if the thunderous noise that wolf had spewed was still tormenting my ears, but then, all of a sudden...
I realized the sound I was hearing now was subtly different from the wolf's electricity.
Was it the next Abnormality making that noise?
Getting shocked by electricity doesn't feel very pleasant, but...
[The next station is Station 6: Selection. The next station is Station 6: Selection.]
Looks like our train doesn't think so.
Still, is this only halfway? That's a lot. I can feel my motivation draining away bit by bit.
......
Station 6: Selection.
There was a machine I'd never seen before.
It looked like it used electricity, but that didn't seem to be the main gimmick.
Just as I was letting my guard down, thinking maybe it was simply strong, Meursault, in his Guido persona, was suddenly grabbed by it and hauled up into the sky.
Was that the gimmick?
The machine lifted one person high into the air, then did nothing else at all.
...What was this?
In any case, when we attacked the thing that was just standing there, something that seemed to be its heart came out.
Once we broke that, the main body lost its posture, and after destroying what remained, the fight ended.
......
Station 7: Uncounted.
Fish with their heads cut off—according to Faust, there was a singular form for the Abnormality's name.
It was much bigger than the singular form we'd seen before, but that didn't matter much.
In the Mirror Dungeon too, nothing had really changed except that the strength that had already been greater than ours became even stronger.
Since the clash itself never really came to pass, a few prisoners could defend actively and target its weakness to win.
Thankfully, it didn't spray blood and corpses everywhere. The laundry was a real pain last time I got hit.
......
Station 8: Existence.
There were those N Corp things that mimicked our attacks.
Whenever they took a stance to counterattack, we'd land light hits, and whenever they showed signs of attacking, we'd focus-fire them. That made it easy enough to win.
There was one incident where someone made a mistake and one of them recovered a huge amount, but we didn't suffer any major casualties.
......
Station 9: Serum.
Yeah, I'd been expecting this one from the name alone.
Who was the most famous serum user we'd fought?
K Corp.
I'd been hoping for nothing more than a K Corp Grade 2 Extraction Department employee, but then a Grade 3 Extraction Department employee showed up, which caught me off guard.
No, seriously—how does it make sense to start the fight with the ampoule fully activated?
For several minutes until the ampoule ran dry, we had to take a beating without being able to counter properly.
Still, once the ampoule was empty, that absurd regeneration faded, and we were somehow able to win.
I really hope I never see those things again.
Things that won't die no matter how much you hit them are the worst.
......
Station 10: Aseol.
By now, even moving my body had become a real problem, and the sound had started filling with heavy noise.
Maybe that's why the N Corp snake that appeared this time felt extremely, no, grotesquely tough.
I think we really beat on it for dozens of minutes.
The two quadrupeds that came with it were weaker than the original, but they were still annoying.
Partway through, the snake-form Abnormality changed shape and started spewing poison every time it got hit... well, I won't bother going into that.
Honestly, if Faust's E.G.O from the Pass hadn't shown such incredible performance, we probably would've died long ago.
......
Station 11: Current.
Looks like even the makers were getting tired of making these.
The electric wolf and the headless fish from earlier were together.
Was it really that hard to come up with a new boss?
Of course, since there were two of them, they weren't as strong as before.
It was basically the same as when we met them in the Mirror Dungeon.
Still, it was rough, and naturally a few of us died, but there were no major pattern changes or huge variables, so we won without too much trouble.
They say sound doesn't carry well because of the refraction of space, but I can still hear some of Dante's words.
Is that all because of the thing in Dante's head too?
I don't know.
......
Station 11: Purity... ah, so this is where it comes.
Right, if Aid and the G Corp branch manager showed up, it'd be strange if she were left out.
And if it's Purity, there's no room for argument.
Maybe Sinclair sensed it too, because he started trembling.
I thought about saying something to comfort him, but unfortunately I realized even my voice wouldn't reach him.
I could only endure this distorted world and pat his shrunken back.
Please don't overheat.
I thought that, even though expecting that much from him was probably too much.
......
Fortunately, Kromer wasn't all that difficult.
Her raw specs hadn't increased much, and in fact, since the gimmick where she recovered heavily when hit by burn or bleed attacks had disappeared, she felt a little easier.
Of course, her actual strength had clearly gone up compared to before, but so had ours, so we were able to handle it somehow.
And then, the final station: Muah.
There, the sound of a wooden fish being struck echoed out.