After Annie had set herself on fire, burned the mirror impostor to ashes, and restored the elevator mirror to normal, the elevator finally settled down for a while and stopped acting up.
"..."
But Annie knew it was only temporary.
Her opponent clearly hadn't given up, so she wasn't in a hurry either. She simply waited patiently, curious to see what other tricks it would try.
Soon!
The other side's retaliation came.
"?!"
!?('')
Annie suddenly felt weightless. It was much like the sensation she'd experienced aboard spacecraft without artificial gravity, back when she'd been out in space.
"??"
(^)
At first, Annie thought the other side was trying to send the elevator plunging to the bottom floor and kill her by making her fall to her death. But then her astonishing senses told her the elevator didn't seem to be descending. Some strange force field was affecting her perception instead.
"..."
(゜-゜)
After noticing something was off, Annie had to admit that this so-called "elevator evil spirit," invisible and intangible as it was, was pretty impressive. But it was facing Her Majesty Queen Annie. If it had been anyone else—like those two strange attendants from before—they would surely have been fooled and terrified out of their minds.
She also almost immediately understood how it killed people in situations like this. It was simply using the domino effect of fear, pushing the body and mind toward death.
In other words, when an ordinary person realized the elevator was plummeting at high speed, extreme fear would trigger a flood of hormones that overwhelmed the cardiovascular system. The body's blood-vessel regulation would then fail, causing shock or spasms. If the person already had an underlying condition—heart trouble, or a cerebrovascular problem, for instance—it would flare up under the stress. Finally, mental collapse