Chapter 135: The Merciless Fog Trap

Chapter 135: The Merciless Fog Trap

All my comrades had suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared, basically like a suspense horror, but this was no time to whine or worry. What I needed to do was take fast and decisive action.

Fuuuh, okay relax slong as its not a pitfall or teleport trap, they shouldnt have wandered far

Itd be hard to reach them if they somehow fell into a pit leading them to a lower floor, not to mention a teleport would make their location completely indeterminable. So Ill just not think about those possibilities.

That would leave other possibilities such as, like with me and the arachne, they couldve been kidnapped by some monster, fallen into some kind of illusion or hypnosis, or simply wandered off with their own two feet.

I mean, that pink gas reeealy gave the impression that itd make you see things.

They either went back from where we came, or took one of these forks

There was always the possibility that they sensed some great danger and left me as a decoy while they ran to save their skins, but I kind of felt like that wasnt what happened.Finnd new chapters at novelhall.com

This was nothing like that intense trust towards their friends that shonen manga MCs tend to show. There was a clear trap here, this pink smog, and whoever designed it wouldnt let the people who showed up simply escape it.

And then the fog cleared away since the foolish prey did in fact fall for the trap. The trap had worked and that is what mattered.

I was fine because well, I had my handy dandy Venomic Vessel skill.

Lets start from the right

GUGAGA!

Yeah yeah going solo was a bad idea, but Id done it a few times. Everyone was missing, and the merit of finding them outweighed the risks of searching.

I steered Raptor into the large hall now cleared of fog, and went into the right hand path.

The passage was fluffy as usual, no different from the stuff weve been seeing throughout the zone.

MOAAHHH!

Outta the way!

There was the occational cloud creature blocking our path, but Raptor just trampled them over as I continued to search, for a while.

Shit, whys this place so big

Actually, this was my first time not following the compass, and blindly looking for someone in an area. I had experience scouting out the areas around a fairy square or a boss room, but nothing like this.

Its at times like these that you realize the importance of mapping .

There were no peculiarities to any of the walls, this cloud zone was insanely easy to get lost in. So before I really did get lost in here, I started scratching down the path in my notebook. I was not about to let myself get lost too.

Guess this is it, I should go back and follow the left path

I did sort of have disasterous luck, so I thought Id picked the wrong path and wasted time, and was about to go back when,

! Ahh~

I heard it, a voice.

Rem, you hear that?

Khruu!

Oh, so you got the better ears then, Raptor

Id discovered something unexpected, so, I relied on Raptors hearing that was clearly better than mine, and tracked the voice to its origin.

It was still faint, but wed definitely hit upon someones whereabouts. Finding them after that was easy.

Its here

It was a room like any other, an empty room with one entrance. From inside I could hear a mans moaning, wait It was Ueda.

The voice wasnt screaming, so I doubted that he was being gruesomely tortured or eaten alive by goma. From the tone, I suspected that he was in a situation similar to mine when Id been cocooned by the arachne and struggled to escape.

Also, other than Uedas moaning, I could hear no cries of foot steps of a monster thought to have assaulted him, so they shouldnt be more than a couple of them if theyre even there.

I checked my surroundings again so I dont end up getting ambushed.

Now, I just hoped that this Ueda wasnt a fake or illusion.

Gotta do it

Rem and Raptor nodded. Theres three of us, so we would likely be able to quickly subdue the monster, I hoped.

Please dont let there be an arachne-tier or higher mid-boss inside, I prayed as I charged in.

Eat this! Blackhair Bi

SAKURAA! SAKURAAAH! AAAAAHHHHHH!

And there he was, screaming out butt-naked.

What the even how in the. Id seen a lot of bizarre things in the dungeon, but nothing this hard to swallow.

Ok, calm, calm as an ocean, lets take this at face value for now.

Ueda, check. Screaming Souma Sakuras name for some reason, check. Naked, check.

Now go, Swordsman Ueda. Finish off that cloud creature playing as Kenzaki Asuna, kill her.

Heh, heheh Youre kidding, man Wheres the hidden camera

Like Ueda just now, after we force dispelled his hypnosis, Nakai tried denying reality, and looked deflated, dead in the eyes.

Nakai-kun, we arent lying to you, sadly

Ora Nakai, snap outta it, ya fag

Shit, fucking shit Why dammit I, I was serious too, me and Asuna, we were gonna be

Cmon man, enough of that, get your clothes on

Uhuuu

While crying like a little bitch, Nakai gathered his, also similarly, scattered about clothes and put them on.

Seriously, stop with the beta orbiting around a girl like Yamada. As a third party, it just feels like a pain in the keister.

No, I should at least try to have a little more sympathy.

I see, so it wasnt just the sex, you had a whole scene play out for you

I asked Ueda and Nakai to explain what theyd experienced in detail.

First, right after Id gone ahead through the large hall, the pink gas filled the whole place all the way to the exit passages. The gas was thick, and they couldnt see anything or anyone. They then started hearing sounds of monsters from every direction.

Panicking, they simply ran, and basically, everyone got separated.

Then, when I was like, Oh man, Im in some deep shit now

I saw Asu-, K-Kenzaki coming from the other side of the passage real hurt

For me it was Sakura-chan

Thats when the real act started.

The girl theyd been crushing on had chanced upon them and the two started their shattered and tragic new lives with their new partners.

The fake Sakura and the fake Asuna that Ueda and Nakai saw respectively, both said that her whole party had been eliminated and she was the only one who escaped with her life. Im alone, help me please, youre the only one I can rely on! They begged, tugged at the guys heartstrings, and transition to bed scene

I think you only see loose, desperate women like that in Hollywood movies

Sock it Momokawa, you dont even know how it feels!

Yeah, I even fucking swore that Id protect Asuna with my life!

Dont you think it was too easy

It was, alright!

It was, yeah, but cmon man

No, sorry about that. I can kinda sympathize. I cant say Id be able to take it as well as youre doing if I experienced that kind of situation

Still, this hypnotism was oddly powerful. I cant imagine the cloud creatures being smart enough to pull it off, so they could be using our memories Like, self-suggestion? You imagine a good enough reason to sleep with your girl, and no matter how convenient the situation is, you wont feel anything off, or notice it in the middle. Actually, you probably wont want to notice, you wont want to accept the sweet, sweet dream as a dream and wake up.

Which could mean that the pink gas, rather than being like an hallucinogenic drug, it was more a form of telepathy inducer.

Mmyeah, we got magic and curses, so adding telepathy to the list doesnt sound off bounds at all.

Wait, wont that mean that when Takanashi Kotori, the Sage, saw into our real Jobs, it wasnt actually like she was looking at our status screens like in an RPG but actually reading our thoughts with some sort of telepathy?

Even if she wasnt, a Sage sounded like itd have no problem having a telepathy skill or two. She couldve been reading everyones minds without anyone noticing I dismissed her as a scared little wimp, but I should be more careful the next time we meet.

Actually, speaking of whom

So. Shimokawa-kun is probably with

Yeah, you guessed it, Takanashi-san

Totes

Now three, we heard traces of Shimokawas voice after another 15 minutes of searching.

Haah, haah K-Kotori-chan, we cant, we really, oh dude, oh, ohhhh!!

I was getting tired of this already. I didnt want to hear any more dude moans. Like seriously, stop with the solo male porn already.

Momokawa, lets do him mercy

Well do it

Ok, I leave it to you two

In all honesty, this sort of work of trying to manage a manic and naked young man was difficult, dirty and dangerous, 3 Ds I want to divert away from. If they want to switch with me, they can be my guest. Shimokawa-kun, you have such nice friends whod go to these lengths for you. Im jealous, no really.

That actually kind of sounds like something Higuchi would say. Anyway, we got the totem-pole trio back.

===

TL: Scallop