Chapter 150
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 150
Chapter Title: Chapter 150
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 150
Chapter Title: Sloth
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Real stage.
The moment the clown uttered those words, Erzsebet watched as the scenery around her transformed in an instant. But she had already seen the dungeon's interior shift into this bizarre theater-like scene just moments ago, so the surprise wasn't all that great. More than that, she focused on the blood Batori had handed her.
"...I can't feel it?"
Yet even though she had clearly received the blood from Batori, there was nothing on her hand. Realizing this, Erzsebet felt a deep disgust and attacked the clown once more.
"Did you move it, you bastard?"
The clown's ability to freely swap positions of weapons or people alike, which he'd been using since earlier. She figured he must have snatched the blood from her hand.
-Pshhhhk!!!
Blood blades shot out in a flash, riddling the clown. His body tore into shreds, the chunks swelling grotesquely before each fragment transformed into a new clown.
"""Hihahaha! Hohoho!"""
"Same old...!!"
Erzsebet clicked her tongue and sprayed her blood in fine mist, pulverizing all the newly born clowns at once. But the clown's shredded flesh swelled up again, splitting into an uncountable horde of clowns.
"What...?"
"""Hahaha! How do you like it? My real stage! Now... let's enjoy it! The clown's true stage. The Grand Circus!"""
The split clowns opened their mouths in unison, their raucous voices echoing from all directions as the surrounding scenery slowly warped.
Into a bizarre, twisting, burning, rippling unknown darkness.
Oculus Phantasma. The fifth holy relic possessed by the Hero of Deception.
The moment he drew his strongest weapon, the empress before Pierre's eyes and Erzsebet's movements froze solid.
Feeling profound fatigue, Pierre still grinned in satisfaction.
"How do you like my real stage?"
No answer would come, but he asked the frozen women anyway. With his Oculus Phantasma exposed, their minds were surely trapped in the labyrinth he manifested.
"Kuh...!"
Pierre, who had been laughing brightly, suddenly shed bloody tears and collapsed.
His holy relic was powerful enough to trap even the master of the demonic realm in the labyrinth, but it came at the cost of devouring the user's eyesight with every use.
He had used this ability multiple times in the past, so his vision was already severely degraded. If possible, he never wanted to use it again... but...
'Kuh... whatever. If I can achieve this much, it's still a profit.'
Wiping away the bloody tears and ignoring his one clouded eye as best he could, Pierre tried to observe the minds of the two women trapped in the labyrinth. He couldn't stimulate their bodies lest they awaken, so killing them outright was impossible, but peering into the minds he had imprisoned should be feasible.
'Alright, first... you.'
He considered observing the empress's mind too, but first, that unidentified demon... the one the empress called 'Erzsebet.'
As his shattered-mirror-like pupils glowed once more, Pierre's vision overlaid the blankly standing real Erzsebet with her form being dragged ever deeper into a hellish landscape as time passed.
"Hihoho! Looks like you're enjoying yourself."
Gazing at Erzsebet, eternally trapped in endless battle repeating Pierre's performance, he chuckled cheerfully and focused the demonic eye's power further. Having already activated the ability once, he needed to squeeze every drop from it.
"Where did you come from, wench?"
Pierre hurled the question while concentrating the eye's power. The voice would ring clearly in Erzsebet's ears, stimulating her subconscious. The answer to his query would surface unconsciously and appear above her trapped mind in the labyrinth.
[South... Master's dungeon...]
And as expected, her mind began flowing into him. South... good. But master? Could this demon be a subordinate of another Dungeon Master?
Next question, then...
"What is your relationship with the empress..."
The moment Pierre tried to extract as much information as possible during the ability's duration and uncover the unidentified demon's identity, he sensed something off.
This labyrinth manifested by his demonic eye, where nothing should intervene. This space, meant to hold only the demon's trapped mind, felt like... something was intruding!!!
"Erzsebet. What the hell are you doing?"
In the southern ruins, Eugene had dispatched Erzsebet and was anxiously staring at the [Employee Management] window. When her [Status] suddenly changed, he muttered to himself in worry.
Just moments ago, a hefty chunk of points had poured in, and now...
🩸 Status:Confusion
It had shown as normal just before, now 'Confusion'... Was she fighting someone? The empress, maybe?
'Whatever it is.'
Confusion... didn't sound good. Could he fix that too?
'Oh, damn... what? Why is it so expensive?'
I tapped the [Status] section on Erzsebet's window, only to recoil at the system message demanding an absurd amount of points.
Even treating a demon on the brink of death wouldn't cost this much... and this was half off thanks to Jeanne's [Talent]?
'Tch... screw it. Better not skimp and risk something happening.'
Eugene hesitated at the enormous sum for a moment but sighed and restored Erzsebet's status.
"Graaak?!"
Pierre suddenly felt excruciating pain in the eye housing his demonic eye and collapsed flat.
'Bounced out?!'
He had been interfering with that demon—Erzsebet's—mind, trying to read her subconscious... when something intruded into what should have been untouchable, and he was flung out.
"Wha...? E-Erzsebet?"
Perhaps because Pierre had collapsed, the empress's mind, also trapped in the labyrinth, began to awaken gradually.
And the moment her mind cleared, Erzsebet's interrupted blood absorption resumed properly. The blood the empress had given her was fully absorbed without remainder.
"Hahk...! Hahk...! Damn it... no way!"
Dropping his clownish speech, bleeding from his eyes, Pierre tried to activate his demonic eye again. And at that moment.
-Thuk!!
"...!!!"
Pierre felt his mind blank out briefly before snapping back. Only then did he grasp the situation.
'Died once?'
This sensation of his consciousness cutting out. He knew it well.
The power of the holy relic 'Pluto' activating, shedding his dead flesh for a new body.
'Died without even noticing? Me?'
Pierre, who wielded near-divine might on his own stage, reeled from the unfamiliar sensation as Erzsebet's form began to change before his eyes.
Deep ennui filled her eyes, her three pairs of blood wings compressing into one. A halo like an angel's, formed of blood, appeared above her head. The empress watching from behind knelt in rapture.
"Ahh... so beautiful...!"
"Hoo..."
Erzsebet, her transformation complete, let out a soft sigh. Pierre tried to use 'Reposition' to create distance first. But at that instant, his mind snapped again.
-Thuk!!
"Guhk...!!"
Not even a full scream escaped. The holy relic activated instantly, his mind crumbled and reformed, a new body born.
'What the hell...!'
He tried to assess the situation upon revival, but despairingly, it didn't end there.
-Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!!
His mind flickered repeatedly. His consciousness thread severed and reconnected over and over, repeating death more than ten times in a blink. At the end, Pierre finally realized what was killing him.
'Blood...!'
Blood. The source of life flowing through any living being's body.
His own blood, surging hotly through his veins, boiled uncontrollably, shredding his flesh and killing him repeatedly.
'Impossible. Not external blood, but directly controlling the blood inside the body?'
This was... a miracle even the 'empress' couldn't perform. Was such a thing possible? A power that dooms any blood-bearing lifeform inescapably!
"Don't... underestimate me...!!"
Pierre clung to his crumbling mind, desperately resisting Erzsebet's power. Flipping the mask of the holy relic 'Persona,' a weeping mask emerged. His skin hardened immensely, his anti-magic resistance strengthening against external forces.
Finally, the repeated deaths halted.
"Ha... haha! That surprised me. Hiding such an amusing trick...!"
The moment he tried to regain composure with his usual speech, a tiny droplet of blood entered his eye.
"Ah."
-Kwaduduk!!!
It was meaningless. The defense-specialized weeping mask blocked his blood boiling, but that was all. An insurmountable wall existed between him and Erzsebet.
Each droplet she casually flicked stole his life. As his mind severed and restored repeatedly, Pierre felt his sanity fraying bit by bit.
Bad matchup. Pierre's ever-shifting powers were ample for deceiving and toying with foes, but his core strength was the weakest among 5-star heroes.
"Stop... stop...!!"
Pierre tried to escape the endless deaths via 'Reposition,' but to no avail. He hastily swapped her position, only for her body to dissolve into a handful of blood, the entire stage awash in it.
Blood ocean everywhere, all of it her flesh. 'Reposition' rendered pointless.
Something was wrong. Pierre tried to flee somehow, but his stage, 'Room,' granted near-divine powers to its user atop it—yet he couldn't leave the stage either.
No clown leaves the stage mid-performance.
-Thuk!!
His 100th death. In desperation, fearing retrieval failure, Pierre unleashed every Arcana he hadn't used. He pulled new ones with each death, but inescapable death came anyway.
150th death. All Arcana depleted. He tried the demonic eye once more, but with no sight of Erzsebet's body—only blood sea—he couldn't even make eye contact, failing.
200th death. He cycled Persona's masks for various resistances but soon quit. The agony in those brief moments of enduring her power before death intensified.
And at the 299th death.
"Ah... ah..."
Pierre realized something inside him had broken. Noticing his state, perhaps, Erzsebet—who had slain him relentlessly—paused for the first time without instant-killing. But Pierre, broken, didn't even notice, mumbling beastly cries blankly.
"Staaage... staaage..."
And in his half-collapsed mind, Pierre's subconscious chose escape from pain.
Accepting the desperate wish from his unconscious, the still-active holy relic 'Room' deactivated. The stage filling the space vanished, Pluto's life-clinging power cut off.
In the final moment, Pierre's eyes cleared sharply—then his body vanished instantly.
'Must escape...!'
One chance won at the cost of a madman's act. The sole opportunity to flee that insane monster's grasp.
Pierre used his last two unused Arcana cards.
-Kwaaang!!
Black hellfire erupted. From a fellow 5-star hero, Inferno Hero Scarlett's black flames infused in the Arcana exploded, blinding Erzsebet and burning the blood scattered everywhere.
Then the pocket watch Arcana activated, accelerating his body's time.
'I'm alive.'
Off the stage, out of the dwarf clan's dungeon, under sunlight—Pierre sighed in relief unconsciously.
"Leaving the stage without permission... what a pathetic clown."
".........!!!!"
Atop pristine white garb, black flames flickering harmlessly, Erzsebet—who had tailed him unnoticed—sneered.
As Pierre opened his mouth to shout something, she swung her blood scythe dismissively, deeming it worthless.
-Seruk!!!!
The masked head flew. What expression hid behind? Rage? Despair? Or blank denial?
Didn't matter. Erzsebet ignored his clownish end, mask and all.
"Ahh... you're back... the real... real Erzsebet...!"
Watching elegant, beautiful Erzsebet mercilessly butcher the foe, the empress teared up and followed behind.
"Erzsebet... back to the castle... so much to say... I'll prepare your bath like before... tidy the bedding... back to how it was..."
"Batori..."
Having slain the clown and absorbed Batori's gifted blood, her mind chaotic and overwhelming drowsiness half-closing her eyes, Erzsebet was about to reply when...
[Employee Dispatch] time has ended.
-Whoosh!!
"...Ah...?"
Right before the teary-eyed empress's eyes, Erzsebet vanished without a trace.
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