“Seriously, what was Kiyu thinking sending me to this Circle of Hell?” Evon sighed as he recalled getting kicked out of the elevator nearly as soon as the doors opened. They had initially decided to let Kiyu enter since she had once been a manipulator of lust who had used that to her benefit to assassinate prime targets of the Royal Zodiac Clans. She should, therefore, be the ideal candidate to handle whatever this floor could hold and yet…
“Oven, I don’t feel like it, you do it! You better hurry up! Although it should be hilarious if Pei comes to find you instead and sees that you are not done yet… or worse, finds you caught up in this place. Hehehe!” Kiyu had even made fun of him as she refused Evon entry back to the elevator.
The Bear and Wolf Clan Foxes did not seem to care which one of them went, and Rex only gave him a sorry look, so now the champagne pink fox lied on the floor already defeated before he even faced any ‘lustful’ enemy.
“Damn where did Kraft go off again? He is the only one who can somewhat reign her in… Who am I kidding, he sure as hell is out having fun wreaking havoc. …whatever.” Evon sighed even deeper before he got back up after staring onto the ceiling for a while.
After all, he really did not want Pei to make fun of him as well. Just what had he ever done to those two, that they picked on him constantly?
As he walked further into the corridor, it was evident that the Prison Core was already changing the environment around Evon to suit the theme of lust. Starting from a simple corridor hallway, it slowly transformed into a corridor of sexual parlours tempting Evon to indulge into his fantasies.
With a glance, he observed that there were various types of girls ranging from the girl next door, over the highschool sweetheart up to the exotic foreign exchange student… but also a variety of monsters that were synonymous to Jin’s minions.
“What the hell?!” Evon exclaimed when he saw some distinctly female versions of Werejackals, Orcs, Goblins and even other members of the animal tribes. “Does this Prison Core have the ability to access my memory and change them into physical hologram forms? I believe my psychological defences shouldn’t be that far off, if not be on par with Pei…” Evon mumbled to himself as he moved further in.
The projections, illusions or whatever they were only sent him enticing glances, tempting him to come over by his own accord. He continued going further in until he stopped in his tracks when he saw a very familiar person right in front of him.
The female shadow slowly turned into someone he knew…Kiyu. Evon was shocked to see how the Prison Core was able to flawlessly replicate Kiyu from his memory. Interestingly it wasn’t the Kiyu who had just kicked him out. Instead, it was an image from their younger days right around the time he first met her and the rest of the skulk.
“Ah… could it be that this core is just like a programme accessing some innate desires? If so it must be taking out memories that have some sort of ‘Oh my god, this girl looks good’ tag… Wait, that does not make sense! I don’t have any such desires for werejackals, orcs or goblins!” Evon mumbled to himself.
“Perhaps, you craved for them unknowingly when your eyes set upon them.” The fake Kiyu suggested as she started to walk closer, but suddenly she felt a cut on her face. She did not even see when it happened and the fox in front of her seemed to be still pondering on the situation.
“Is the concoction not working?” The fake Kiyu thought to herself, pretending that nothing had happened. She decided to ooze a more potent mixture out into the atmosphere. However, that champagne pink fox had resumed walking around again, ignoring the fake Kiyu.
“Why is it not working?!” The fake Kiyu decided to maintain her façade and moved closer. To her dismay, she felt another cut, this time it was deeper and closer to her neck. Seeing that her enemy appeared to have seen through her, she decided to drop the act and materialised a scythe to swing at the fox.
“Oh. So it was you, after all. Mind telling me how you created all these fake monsters? I don’t recall ever seeing a female werejackal up till now. Although those seemed to like how I would picture them. So is that it, you accessed my memories and just recreated what I thought of them?” Evon was still as calm as ever as the fake Kiyu tried to cut him down.
Yet for the fraudulent person, she found herself strung up with multiple strings all around her like a butterfly caught in a web.
“WHAT!? HOW?! How is the concoction not working on you?” The fake Kiyu finally revealed her form, which resembled a female Lich.
“Oh my. Didn’t expect you to be a Lich. Or should it be Lichness? You seem to have specialised in performing illusions rather than summoning undead? Yet you don’t seem to be a Banshee… this is very interesting.” Evon spoke as he transformed into his human form and started taking notes down. “What is your name, Lichness?”
“Why must I answer you?!” The Lichness shouted as she released a swarm of murder hornets from her mouth but to her surprise, each and every hornet was cut down with the emergence of even more strings.
“You don’t have to, but you should know that I can just kill you now if you don’t cooperate with me here. Perhaps that would be for the better. Kraft did ask us not to play around. We can have a proper conversation on how you conjure that at a later time, I guess. Still, you should tell me where the key is, so I won’t waste time searching for it.”
Since the moment he had entered the floor, he had been playing with the now bound Lichness. Despite their strange relationship, Evon knew that Kiyu wouldn’t just swap places in a serious situation unless there was some reason for it.
Kiyu, who was a frequent handler of Evon’s drugs, had noticed a faint scent of some illicit drugs lingering from the floor of lust when the elevator doors opened. At the time, Evon hadn’t noticed it since he was too engrossed with his notes at the back of the elevator.
Only after Evon had been kicked out of the elevator did he realise it as well. With Kiyu providing him with the perfect excuse, he had decided to bide his time, by playing the part of a sulking person abandoned by his teammates.
In that duration, Evon had already begun analysing and breaking down the components used via the lingering scent alone. Although there were some disparities due to the difference in their worlds, he found that the senses and nerves triggered were the same so he created an immune response to block against the scent with his cultivation.
Only when he felt ready, did Evon decide to take a stroll along the corridor. Had the Lichness struck Evon while he was lying there weakened, she would have stood a fighting chance against the Psychedelic Fox, but now the Lichness found herself in quite the predicament.
The Lichness herself did not realise, that ironically, she was the one to have fallen under the influence of her opponent’s drugs. Those strings, she was ‘bound’ by were mere illusions and not Evon’s true weapons.
“One’s perception of reality varies.” Evon thought as he watched the struggling Lichness who ‘experienced’ the strings getting even tighter. Though it was part of his ancient cultivation techniques, he honestly did not expect it to work on an undead.
“So does that mean that you are not entirely an undead creature, but a mixture?” Evon continued to further cross examine his specimen, but after cursing him for a while, leading to more cuts on her body, she decided to keep silent. (Or perhaps it was just too tight for her?)
“Huh. The truth serum doesn’t seem to be working on you. A shame. Fine, I’ll just ask Peppers or Moloch about it, later.” The Psychedelic Fox decided to strangle her with his string illusions as he took his notes.
