Night of the Black Dragon's Mad Dance (IV)

The scope and power of this explosion were far beyond the last. Snake shadows blazed fiercely in the inferno.

The elevator had only descended a short distance when the chain explosions it triggered came crashing down from above.

A world-shattering explosion rang out above the elevator. A bright red blast wave surged into the dim elevator shaft, tossing out a burning bronze skeleton.

Arcs of electricity flickered within the shaft, igniting vast clouds of smoke and dust.

The bronze skeleton fell onto the old elevator. With its fat melted away, there was no trace left of the Deadpool's former savagery.

Inside the car, Lu Mingfei helped Caesar sit down. The intense exertion from earlier had only worsened Caesar's already broken ribs.

"Cough, cough, if you ask me—"

"If there isn't anything you're especially attached to, then in the future, you can join the Lace White Dress Dance Troupe in my student union..." Caesar had not even finished his earnest, awful last words before the pain knocked him unconscious.

"The Lace White Dress Dance Troupe? Does something with a name like that belong in a university student union?"

The Evolution Potion's effects were fading. Lu Mingfei stood guard by the elevator doors with his long sword in his arms, occasionally tilting his head up. The blazing heat in his Golden Eyes was gradually disappearing.

"It seems we're safe." Chu Zihang leaned against the elevator wall, his face bloodless. He had just torn off part of his shirt to crudely stop Caesar's bleeding.

"Don't raise flags in an elevator, Senior Brother, especially not with that poker face of yours."

Lu Mingfei listened warily to the sounds carried by the wind, not daring to relax in the slightest.

Compared to Blood Sickle, Caesar's Kamaitachi was better suited for sentry duty. With Caesar currently cosplaying Sleeping Beauty, Lu Mingfei could only fill in for him.

It wasn't that he was being overly cautious. There had simply been too many lessons from the past.

He remembered one time when the four of them had successfully escaped into the elevator. They had nearly reached the happy ending and popped the champagne. With no one keeping watch, Caesar and Gen Chisei had even started a "discussion of heroes from headquarters over wine."

Gen Chisei: "This Ultraman song is pretty good, isn't it? I was the one who suggested that the Fuma clan head add it to safety mode. It's from Hong Kong, China. By the way... who exactly is the strongest student at your headquarters?"

Caesar: "If we don't get hung up on year level, I used to think it was either me or Chu Zihang. Today, I've changed my mind."

Chu Zihang: "Right now, it should be Lu Mingfei."

Lu Mingfei: "No, no, you're flattering me. Uh, it should be someone other than me, right? By headquarters, do you mean that Cas... Cassell College you mentioned?"

Caesar: "That's a strange question. Real modesty doesn't suit your taste. If it were fake modesty, I thought you'd say anyone but you and Fingel. You once said that you were at least recyclable trash, while Fingel was non-recyclable."

Lu Mingfei: "Eh, who's Fingel?"

Gen Chisei: "Fingel... that name sounds familiar. I heard about him when I was an exchange student. Has that senior still not graduated?"

Lu Mingfei: "Is the graduation GPA requirement at that school really strict? Could one of you explain that Word Spirit common knowledge and Dragon Lineage stuff to me again? I... want to study up."

Then, at the very end of that run, several large Deadpools had forced apart the elevator car, shamelessly launching a sneak attack on the wounded and shattering his intermittently studious heart.

End of recollection.

In reality, the alternating explosions woke Caesar from his faint. Caesar looked weakly toward the elevator ceiling and muttered, "What's going on? The explosions don't seem to be coming only from the floor we were just on."

Lu Mingfei gave a half-serious, half-joking explanation. "When I came up, I also planted some explosives and timed detonators on the bottom two floors. I installed them according to the manual, around the foundations of Genji Heavy Industries."

It was a warm gift for the Deadpools trapped below, luring them into other passages outside the elevator shaft so they would not get out too easily.

The other three fell silent.

Not long after, Chu Zihang abruptly seized upon the key point. "How much did you plant? If it's close to the foundation, it could damage critical vertical structural components. This building isn't going to suffer a large-scale collapse, is it?"

That was what the other two had wanted to ask but hesitated to say.

"It won't. I'm pretty experienced at blowing up Genji Heavy Industries. This time, the yield and placement are both perfectly reasonable." Lu Mingfei spoke with complete confidence. "This building is sturdy. Top-notch blast resistance."

Gen Chisei turned his head blankly, his two sharp brows slowly drawing together.

He sounded like some wildcat bomber. Caesar felt there were too many things to mock and had no idea where to begin. "Where did you get so much explosives... Forget it, pretend I didn't ask. If you didn't want to tell me, you'd probably answer something like, 'I borrowed them from Dingdang Cat.'"

"Eh, you know Dingdang Cat too? Is that cartoon popular in Europe as well?" Lu Mingfei looked at the blond guy. His impression of Caesar was that he was a pretty loyal Italian foreigner, with well-developed pecs and decent shooting skills. He was occasionally inexplicably arrogant, but never put on airs.

Caesar shrugged. "More accurately, I know Little Dingdang, also known as Doraemon. Although Dingdang Cat and Little Dingdang's Doraemon were both created by Fujiko F. Fujio, only Doraemon is particularly popular in Italy."

Lu Mingfei clapped in realization. "That's all the same. Doraemon is just more famous than Dingdang Cat. Back where I'm from, we usually use Dingdang Cat to refer to Doraemon. Lots of people don't even know they're actually two different works. Senior Brother Chu, did you know?"

"I knew they were two different cartoons, but I've only watched a few episodes of Doraemon and seen one movie in the theater." Chu Zihang nodded, then shook his head.

He was someone who had not had much of a childhood.

Lu Mingfei's ears twitched slightly, catching a juicy piece of gossip.

Someone with Chu Zihang's personality had gone to see Doraemon at the movies? He probably had not gone alone.

What kind of monster had enough pull to get Big Brother Chu to accompany them to the theater?

That kind of earth-shattering news would surely break the hearts of all those girls at Shilan High School who thought of Senior Brother Chu by day and dreamed of him by night. Lu Mingfei could not help sighing.

Thinking back, his middle-school self had probably never dreamed that he would become teammates with the legendary Senior Brother Chu from Shilan... It even seemed like they were incredibly close. To him, being able to say something like, "I've got your back," without hesitation meant they were close beyond measure.

Come to think of it, his sophomore-year self in this game seemed to be doing pretty well. He wondered if he had met another girl he liked.

His old habit was acting up again. Lu Mingfei suppressed the urge to let his imagination run wild.

"Even in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, where the work was created, many people can't tell those two cats apart." Lying down, Gen Chisei added, "The grilled seafood and figurines there are both good. The grilled seafood is half-price at midnight."

"You're an otaku too, Emperor?" Caesar snorted.

"Not really. I went there the year before last to settle a conflict between clubs, and while I was at it, I helped... helped someone buy some dolls."

"More girls like dolls, don't they? I wouldn't have thought you'd personally do that. Couldn't you just have one of your subordinates buy them for you?" Something stirred faintly in Caesar's heart. "Judging by that expression, do you have a younger sister or something?"

He remembered this guy saying that his younger brother had died. It could not possibly have been something he bought to burn as an offering for his brother.

If he had gone to buy them himself, they must have been for someone important.

Gen Chisei closed his eyes, gave a soft "Mm," and said nothing more.

Hearing no sign of Deadpools lurking in the shaft, Lu Mingfei let out a long breath and smiled tiredly. Sure enough, endings could be changed. This time, instead of talking about Ultraman, everyone was talking about Doraemon.

Aside from the distant echoes of explosions, the elevator shaft was temporarily filled only with the rumbling descent of the freight elevator. At last, he relaxed.

This counted as a perfect ending now, the perfect ending he had hoped for for so long.

But when that perfect ending truly arrived... he could not help feeling a little melancholy.

["Genji Heavy Industries Instance" Load No. 701. Instance difficulty adjusted to Hard Mode. Cleared successfully. Saving... Existing clear record detected. Clear rating: SS. No save required.]