The river blocking the path was extremely wide, but farther along the route toward Demon King's Castle stood two river islets, one large and one small. Their presence divided the originally broad, fast-flowing river into one wide branch and two narrow ones.
On the widest branch floated a cyclic moving platform driven by magical power, while the two narrow channels could be crossed with nothing more than a running jump.
Crossing the river itself was not the problem. The real problem was the malice that appeared alongside it, courtesy of Chosen Space and the developers of Demon World Village.
Demon World Village's developer was named Fujiwara Tokuro. After leaving Konami, whose FUCK-like tendencies were already beginning to show, he went straight to the company then still known as Cap(com). Even while making Demon World Village, this guy had already revealed his vile nature of taking pleasure in tormenting Players.
From the very beginning, Demon World Village, which had never been intended to receive a sequel, had been designed entirely around killing every Player.
Fujiwara had even set up a test spot in an arcade near the company, stuffing development test builds directly into cabinets for people to play for free. Then, taking advantage of his position at the company, he secretly watched the Players' progress from nearby.
Whenever he found a section Players could pass through smoothly without showing any sign of getting stuck, Fujiwara Tokuro would immediately write it down and sprint back to the company, staying up all night to alter the code and add yet another obstacle to block normal progression...
Clearly, Chosen Space had faithfully recreated this vile aspect as well.
Damn, it was authentic!
The instant Cheng Tian jumped down from the moving platform on the river, he inexplicably sensed something and goosebumps immediately rose all over his body.
At the same time, six or seven shield-bearing suits of armor suddenly emerged in the distance from nothingness, gradually solidifying as they floated entirely in midair. Swaying along S-shaped paths like crests and troughs, they slowly approached Cheng Tian and the others.
[Monster Trait--Puppet Armament]
Had Arthur seen them instead of Cheng Tian, he would have immediately recognized those floating knight armors as the armor of the kingdom's knights who had entered Demon King's Castle alongside him and perished there.
Now, those human knight armors had all been repurposed as waste, driven by Ghost Units capable of commanding inanimate objects, intimidating any brazen intruders.
Ghost Armor attacked in a peculiar way. The empty suits of armor they controlled were basically incapable of launching normal attacks. They could only use the armor's own weight and the shields in their hands to exert telekinesis-like physical pressure on intruders. Their true goal was to shove people into the water, which was also why Cheng Tian and the others had Chain Triggered the Ghost Armor spawn as soon as they reached the river islet.
At this moment, Cheng Tian and the others were completely trapped on the small island in the middle of the river, unable to advance or retreat.
These ghosts controlled by the Demon King had little intelligence to speak of. They merely carried out every command of their spells with unwavering loyalty. The Demon King's combat orders for them could basically be summed up in one word—cause trouble.
The group of Ghost Armor merely hovered above the river islet, circling back and forth without drawing nearer or farther away. But whenever someone tried to approach the edge of the island to cross the river, they would immediately swoop down and smack them with Shield Bash attacks that lacked much force but were enough to knock someone off balance.
That would have been manageable while standing at the riverbank, but if someone was already jumping or on the moving platform, they would most likely be knocked into the freezing river.
The durability of Ghost Armor depended entirely on the durability of the armor it possessed. Even if the armor shattered, the ghost itself was usually unharmed. All it needed was another suit of armor before returning to the battlefield.
For Players who lacked information, Ghost Armor, whose role was to delay and cause trouble, was truly extremely deceptive.
However, faced with the Ghost Armor in the air, the two college students were visibly nervous, while Cheng Tian first looked puzzled before suddenly understanding.
Cheng Tian abruptly raised his hand and fired a Great Desolate Sky Imprisoning Finger at one of the Ghost Armor in the air.
"Transform for me!!!"
Cheng Tian shouted.
The Ghost Armor Cheng Tian pointed at seemed to have been struck by Lightning Strike and froze in place.
[You activated "Night Parade of a Hundred Demons" on Normal Template unit "Ghost Armor."] [The difference between your Spirit Attributes is 0. The difference between your Charm Attributes is +9.] [Your skill check success rate is 59%--] [Check successful.]
The Ghost Armor that had passed the skill check visibly began to develop countless fine cracks.
When the Ghost Armor had spawned and drifted over just now, Cheng Tian had already begun to feel that temporarily Uninstalling the Vampire Hunter Template had been the right move.
The terrain of the river islet he currently stood on was a classic death zone for Damage Dodge terrain kills.
Getting hit normally would not have been a big deal. One hundred and forty HP was not enough to get him instantly killed in one blow. But if Damage Dodge forced him into an uncontrollable backward leap, followed by a Seamless Transition into Dissolve Upon Entering Water, Cheng Tian would probably be possessed by a profanity god and dedicate every curse word he had ever learned to Chosen Space in the second or two before drowning.
Fortunately, Macho Strawberry Underwear had granted him Knight's Throw, so he was not stuck merely taking hits.
Even if his Knight Armor shattered and accidentally knocked him into the water, he should still have a chance to climb back onto shore.
Still, with the mindset of might as well, since I'm already here, Cheng Tian tried out his new skill before preparing to throw anything.
To his surprise, after selecting a target, the skill icon was highlighted as though it could be used normally!
That was when Cheng Tian's expression turned subtle.
A newly introduced enemy could not possibly have less than 10% HP remaining, so the only possibility was that its total HP was in the single digits.
That was clearly strange. Whether based on the Original Setting of the game or the usual understanding that dungeon difficulty increased with progression, Ghost Armor should have had more HP than zombies. Thus, Cheng Tian came up with two guesses.
One possibility was that Ghost Armor's HP worked like the Knight Armor he wore: it was displayed as "absolute HP," ignoring damage and only counting effective hits, requiring a fixed number of attacks to destroy it.
The other possibility was that the battered flying armor itself had additional settings such as shields or armor values, which needed to be broken through before he could hurt the true body hidden inside the armor, with only single-digit HP.
So, with the thought of at worst, I'll turn into a monster myself, Cheng Tian directly used "Night Parade of a Hundred Demons" on the Ghost Armor at the front.
At the cost of nearly half his MP, the Ghost Armor began to transform.
Yet when Cheng Tian saw the Ghost Armor he had turned into a "monster" unit, he was the one who froze.
The cracked armor that should have fallen away instead underwent massive self-reassembly and Shape Shift, eventually becoming... a bizarre creature with a white crescent halo above its head, a body and head with strong insectoid characteristics, and an overwhelming sense of hollowness.
["Night Parade of a Hundred Demons" conversion complete.] [You have become the temporary Trainer of the Pocket Monsters/Pokemon "Shedinja."]
Before you continue