Chapter 135

Chapter 135 \n<h1>Chapter 135 – The Merciless Fog Trap</h1>\nAll 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… s’long as it’s not a pitfall or teleport trap, they shouldn’t have wandered far”

It’d 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 I’ll just not think about those possibilities.

That would leave other possibilities such as, like with me and the arachne, they could’ve 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 it’d 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 wasn’t what happened.

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 wouldn’t 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.

“Let’s start from the right”

“GUGAGA!”

Yeah yeah going solo was a bad idea, but I’d 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 we’ve 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, why’s 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.

It’s 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 I’d 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!”\n“Oh, so you got the better ears then, Raptor”

I’d discovered something unexpected, so, I relied on Raptor’s hearing that was clearly better than mine, and tracked the voice to its origin.

It was still faint, but we’d definitely hit upon someone’s whereabouts. Finding them after that was easy.

“It’s here”

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

The voice wasn’t 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 I’d been cocooned by the arachne and struggled to escape.

Also, other than Ueda’s moaning, I could hear no cries of foot steps of a monster thought to have assaulted him, so they shouldn’t be more than a couple of them if they’re even there.

I checked my surroundings again so I don’t end up getting ambushed.

Now, I just hoped that this Ueda wasn’t a fake or illusion.

“Gotta do it”

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

Please don’t 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. I’d seen a lot of bizarre things in the dungeon, but nothing this hard to swallow.

Ok, calm, calm as an ocean, let’s take this at face value for now.

Ueda, check. Screaming Souma Sakura’s name for some reason, check. Naked, check.

This is where I’d stopped thinking at first, but this should be a mental condition brought about by the trap so I considered the situation seriously.

The depraved figure of Ueda was on all fours in the middle of the room, moving vigorously. Especially at the hips… This would normally lead me to the conclusion of him beating the meat, but just below him, I could see this extra fluffy, humanoid form. A cloud creature.

There was this one little, tiny chance that he pushed down and ‘subjugated’ this weak monster. But I should think this more as the creature seducing him somehow.

“Ah! I see, so it was a honey-trap”

This was the most logical conclusion I could come up with given the whole picture.

That pink gas put a sort of suggestion into the target’s mind, and this made those who’d fallen for it see the cloud creature as someone they liked, or someone they found the sexiest, the end result being voila.

I couldn’t tell exactly what would happen to them were they to continue being under the lustful spell, but it won’t be anything good. Could be like, the cloud creatures were sucking their mana out, or something.

Aside from that, what if I’d fallen into this myself? Maybe I’d have this sort of experience with the illusion of Mei-chan or Randou-san. I’m sure that if at some point down the line, I’m dying with no hope for survival, I’d be regretting not dying this way with every fiber of my being. Can’t a boy dream of boobie harem heaven…

“Curse you Ueda, hogging the fun stuff―― Eat this, Blackhair Bind!”\nAnd die you, fake cloud Souma Sakura creature! ORA! DIE SAKURA!!

I was cursing in completely and utterly personal feelings, something Ruinhilde-sama was likely to scold me for, and used blackhair bind to restrain Ueda, swipe away the cloud creature, and had Rem finish it off without a moment’s delay.

The nude Ueda listlessly fell as I released my bindings on his arms and legs, which is the same time when Rem decapitated the cloud created with one sweep of her knife.

“Moaaahhh…”

Making a low, airy sound, the creature deflated like a balloon and disappeared.

Now then, the main issue now was if Ueda, who I’d forcefully pulled away, would wake up properly. I was pretty mad, and really yanked him with all I had, but there was a chance that this was the type where if the hypnotized person woke up in the middle, they wouldn’t be able to distinguish reality from dream. If this honeytrap turns out to be like that, my actions may just have resulted in indirectly killing the guy.

“Oi, Ueda! Rise and shine!”

“Nnh, uu… S-Sakura?”

“No ya retard! Do I look like the hottest girl in class to you!? Rise and shine already!”

“… Ha-!? W-wait, Momokawa!? Why the fuck are you here, where’d my lovely Sakura go?”

Phew, that actually worked. This hypnosis was the type that came off after a few slaps to the face.

“Ueda-kun, you got tricked by the dungeon, what you were seeing was an illusion”

“E, Illusion…? D-don’t lie to me, I was doing it with…”

“With Souma Sakura?”

“Uh! I, I was uh… Uhm, yeah well… Okay, haha, yeah, a dream, it was, just a dream…”

Shit man, I’ve never seen anyone look so, dead.

It was probably not as funny to him. If I had some kind of Futaba-Randou fun time myself, I would’ve undoubtedly cried, even begged, to have that dream last just a bit longer. Ueda had accepted reality relatively fast, so I didn’t have much right to complain.

“Anyway, you can do your depression and explain what happened after you get some clothes on, alright?”

“Woah! Oh, yeah, sure thing, sorry…”

And to make matters worse, he was now quickly gathering his uniform and undies that were scattered about. Looking at that, I just felt sad.

“――That’s what I know, so everyone else should be caught in this kind of trap too, or more like, catching some, if you get my drift”

“Momokawa, I don’t really need the dirty jokes right now”

And together with depressed Ueda, we set off on the search.

Ueda being here meant that they hadn’t gone that far away. The cloud creatures probably lured them an appropriate distance away after they’d been hypnotized.

And knowing that they should be close by made for good motivation too. While following and updating my handmade area map, we slowly extended our breadth of search.

“Oh, I hear someone. This should be, Nakai”

Though not as sharp as Thieves, a Swordsman like Ueda also possessed strong senses. His hearing was apparently better than Raptor’s.

“This way”

\n“For me it was Sakura-chan”

That’s when the real act started.

The girl they’d 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. I’m alone, help me please, you’re 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 don’t even know how it feels!”

“Yeah, I even fucking swore that I’d protect Asuna with my life!”

“Don’t you think it was too easy”

“It was, alright!”

“It was, yeah, but c’mon man…”

“No, sorry about that. I can kinda sympathize. I can’t say I’d be able to take it as well as you’re doing if I experienced that kind of situation”

Still, this hypnotism was oddly powerful. I can’t 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 won’t feel anything off, or notice it in the middle. Actually, you probably won’t want to notice, you won’t 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 doesn’t sound off bounds at all.

Wait, won’t that mean that when Takanashi Kotori, the Sage, saw into our real Jobs, it wasn’t 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 wasn’t, a Sage sounded like it’d have no problem having a telepathy skill or two. She could’ve been reading everyone’s 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 Shimokawa’s voice after another 15 minutes of searching.

“Haah, haah… K-Kotori-chan, we can’t, we really, oh dude, oh, ohhhh!!”

I was getting tired of this already. I didn’t want to hear any more dude moans. Like seriously, stop with the solo male porn already.

“Momokawa, let’s do him mercy”

“We’ll 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 who’d go to these lengths for you. I’m jealous, no really.

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