Chapter 443: A Purely Idealistic Theory

Chapter 443: Chapter 443: A Purely Idealistic Theory

Chapter 443: A Purely Idealistic Theory

"From a Game perspective, yes."

Asagiri walked past Shijo Maki and the others, his gaze sweeping over the doors lining both sides of the corridor.

"If everyone in this city hadn’t already been sacrificed to the Hell Devil, infiltrating this place would have been much more troublesome."

"Not only would we have to deal with the Devils imprisoned in these rooms, but we’d probably have to fight the Public Safety Devil Countermeasure Special Operations Unit as well."

"Now, we only need to deal with the Devils."

"Only... only need to?"

Eriri cautiously opened her mouth, intending to ask what Shadow planned to do.

Before she could finish, however, Asagiri casually opened one of the doors in the corridor.

He did not scout ahead.

He did not hesitate.

He simply walked inside as naturally as though he were returning home.

Beyond a thick layer of bulletproof glass stood an ugly Devil with four eyes and a beast like mane.

Asagiri looked directly at it and asked calmly,

"Where is the Public Safety Devil Countermeasure Special Operations Unit’s data stored?"

"Bang!"

The Beast Devil violently slammed itself against the bulletproof glass, baring its fangs and claws with a ferocious expression.

Shijo Maki, Eriri, and Kasumigaoka Utaha immediately tensed and prepared for battle.

Then, in the next second...

"Crack!"

Asagiri’s right hand pierced straight through the thick bulletproof glass.

His fingers seized the mane on the Beast Devil’s head.

At that instant, a terrifying oppressive aura erupted from Asagiri’s body.

The faint amusement in his eyes disappeared.

"I’ll ask one last time."

"Where is the Public Safety Devil Countermeasure Special Operations Unit’s data?"

"I... I don’t know..."

Most Devils in this world were capable of speech.

The powerful ones imprisoned underground by the Special Operations Unit were naturally no exception.

At first, separated by the bulletproof glass, the Beast Devil had failed to understand what kind of existence stood before it.

But the moment Asagiri’s hand broke through the barrier and seized its head, it finally realized how terrifying this human was.

There was no blood left on Asagiri’s clothes now.

Yet the scent of Devil blood clung to him so heavily that it felt as though he had only just crawled out of Hell itself.

"Alright."

Hearing the Beast Devil’s answer, Asagiri merely nodded.

A portion of the dark gray nanoparticles forming his right fingertips dispersed and entered the Devil’s body.

Then he turned around and looked toward Shijo Maki, Eriri, and Kasumigaoka Utaha standing outside.

"It says it doesn’t know."

"Bang!"

The Beast Devil’s body exploded without warning.

Flesh and blood scattered across the room, staining the inside of the transparent bulletproof wall crimson.

"Hiss..."

Kasumigaoka Utaha and Eriri instinctively took several steps backward.

Even Shijo Maki, who knew that the true identity of Shadow was Asagiri, immediately raised her guard.

It was not because she distrusted him.

It was simply an instinctive reaction to danger.

The fluctuation of power Asagiri released at the moment he killed the Beast Devil was enough to fill all three of them with intense fear.

"Alright."

Asagiri turned around, lightly clapped his hands, and smiled.

"Let’s keep searching."

...

Twenty minutes later, inside a dark room at the far end of the corridor.

"This is..."

The moment the door opened, Shijo Maki, Eriri, and Kasumigaoka Utaha stared inside in bewilderment.

What appeared before them was an enormous space filled with towering bookshelves like a vast library.

From an architectural perspective, such a room should not have been able to exist beneath this building.

Then...

A Cursed sound, impossible to describe in words, echoed directly inside their minds.

"Do you wish to understand everything?"

"Do you wish to know all things in this world?"

"Do you wish to continue pursuing the truth...?"

The voice seemed to carry some kind of supernatural influence.

Shijo Maki and the others gradually felt their minds becoming hazy.

Countless symbols representing knowledge appeared within their vision, seemingly on the verge of forcing themselves directly into their consciousness.

At that moment, all three suddenly felt their bodies become light.

Asagiri grabbed them as casually as someone picking up kittens.

First, he threw Kasumigaoka Utaha outside.

Then Shijo Maki.

Finally, Eriri.

The three girls landed in a disorganized pile.

Looking at the resulting arrangement, Asagiri nodded with satisfaction like an artist admiring his finished work.

"Beautiful Girl Pyramid, complete."

"Th-thank you..."

Although Eriri was currently lying on top of her, Shijo Maki’s enhanced physical fitness meant that the weight did not bother her.

She simply looked toward the room, then at Asagiri, who remained standing there as if nothing had happened, and quietly expressed her thanks.

Clearly, she, Eriri, and Kasumigaoka Utaha had all fallen under some kind of mental influence.

If Asagiri had not acted quickly, the consequences could have been dangerous.

What Shijo Maki could not understand was that she and her two teammates all belonged to mage type classes with strong mental attributes.

Yet none of them had been able to resist.

Meanwhile, whatever had caused that mental interference seemed to have absolutely no effect on Asagiri.

Just how high was his mental strength?

"Hmm?"

Inside the library like space, the Cursed voice echoed again.

"Can’t you hear me?"

"Why can’t you hear my words?"

"Do you... possess no desire to explore the unknown?"

Asagiri did not answer.

He merely asked calmly,

"Where is the Public Safety Devil Countermeasure Special Operations Unit’s information?"

"Oh... So that’s what you want to know..."

Hearing Asagiri’s question, the voice became deeply seductive.

"If you wish to know so badly, then open the books upon these shelves."

"All the answers you seek are contained within them..."

"Is that so?"

Asagiri nodded noncommittally.

He looked across the seemingly endless rows of bookshelves and the tens of thousands of neatly arranged books, then murmured thoughtfully,

"So the Special Operations Unit’s important information is hidden among these books."

"That’s actually a pretty clever method."

By now, Asagiri already knew which Devil had been imprisoned inside this room.

The Cosmic Devil.

A powerful Devil born from humanity’s yearning to explore the universe, mixed with its fear of the vast unknown.

The Cosmic Devil’s power was nothing like the Gun Devil’s direct destructive force.

In some ways, it could even appear completely harmless.

Its ability was to instantly pour a nearly infinite amount of knowledge into a human mind.

Even Players with greatly enhanced mental strength could not endure such an overwhelming flood of information.

The inevitable result was complete mental collapse.

But...

"Since you’ve invited me so politely, I won’t hold back."

Asagiri chuckled.

He walked toward one of the bookshelves, pulled out a book, and opened it.

Blank.

He tossed it onto the floor.

Then he pulled out another and began checking it as well.

"H-how could this be...?"

The Cosmic Devil’s voice was filled with shock.

"You opened my body..."

"Why are you completely unaffected...?"

"I think you’ve spent so much time bullying noobs that you’ve started hallucinating."

Asagiri completely ignored the Cosmic Devil’s disbelief and continued searching through the books.

From the Cosmic Devil’s perspective, the situation was probably impossible to understand.

After all, the humans native to this world were fundamentally ordinary people.

Unless they borrowed the power of another Devil, they had no way to contend with Devils directly.

Players, however, were genuine superpowered individuals.

Even Shijo Maki, Eriri, and Kasumigaoka Utaha, who were not considered top tier Players, could maintain several seconds of consciousness while resisting the Cosmic Devil’s mental intrusion.

If they had not lowered their guard because Asagiri was accompanying them, they could easily have sent one person inside first while the others waited outside and pulled them back the moment anything abnormal occurred.

As for Iwanaga Kotoko, whose mental strength as the God of Wisdom had already reached an absurd level, there was even less to discuss.

She was someone capable of counterattacking the Future Devil from a distance when it attempted to spy on her.

And Asagiri was an even more extreme case.

He was completely immune to mental interference.

Against someone possessing that trait, the Cosmic Devil posed no threat whatsoever.

...

About an hour later, Asagiri finally found the information he had been searching for.

"This is..."

Because the Public Safety Devil Countermeasure Special Operations Unit had stored an enormous amount of information inside the room, Shijo Maki had volunteered to help organize it.

However, the moment she read the document in her hands, she frowned.

"Gun Devil Power Record..."

"’Reducing humanity’s awareness and fear of firearms significantly weakens the Gun Devil’s power...’"

"’If the concept of firearms could be completely erased from humanity’s collective memory, then the corresponding Gun Devil would very likely disappear as well...’"

The further Shijo Maki read, the deeper her frown became.

"Are the Devils in this world beings created entirely through idealistic concepts...?"

"What significance does this information have for Players?"

"For most Players, none at all."

Asagiri held another document containing records of the Special Operations Unit’s experiments into how Devils might be made to disappear permanently.

Then he spoke softly.

"But this information is directly connected to the final main storyline of this Game."

At this point, Asagiri finally understood why the system had given him that special hint.

He also understood why Nyx had chosen this world as its second stronghold alongside the Blackwatch world.

Nyx was fundamentally similar to the Devils of this world.

It was an existence born from pure conceptual power.

Its true body could not be destroyed through conventional means.

The only way to erase it completely was to make people forget the very concept that gave birth to Nyx.

But...

How could humanity across every world possibly forget death?

....

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