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ArabicChat Group Crossover: My System Simulates Infinite Anime Worlds — Chapter 32
Chapter 32: A Heartfelt Exchange
She had some screws loose, that one, and was utterly boy-crazy. Instead of applying herself while she was young, she dedicated all her energy to flirting with the handsome boys in her class.
That’s right, she was a character straight out of a youth romantic comedy.
Her cultivation wasn’t half-bad, though, sitting at the One-Star Seventh-Stage level.
As for her current state…
It was unclear who had tied her up, but they had done so with a certain artistic flair. The gag wasn’t merely a towel stuffed in her mouth; it had been carefully reinforced with rope, creating a truly secure silence.
Nagumo nodded internally. This was what a proper kidnapping should look like.
Miura Yumiko’s mind was a dizzying haze. After being abducted, she had been forced to witness what those people did to the muscular hunk, Hayama Hayato—an experience that had nearly shattered her sanity.
She had been certain her life was over, that she would be brainwashed and forced into the Beast God Cult, dragging her family down with her. She had resigned herself to a fate worse than death.
She never, ever expected a black-robed man wearing an Ultraman mask to suddenly appear before her.
Nagumo didn’t bother trying to decipher the complex storm of emotions swirling in her eyes. He simply sliced open the bars of her cage with a casual flick of his wrist and began searching her person.
Miura Yumiko’s body thrashed wildly against her bonds. Her eyes widened in extreme panic as muffled, desperate sounds escaped the gag. She was convinced he was about to do something unspeakable to her.
Nagumo, however, was merely looking for the storage bag he knew she had hidden.
Under Miura Yumiko’s utterly incredulous gaze, he located it and proceeded to empty its contents. He took all the cultivation resources, spirit stones, and every other valuable item.
Then, he casually tossed the empty bag back onto her lap. Speaking in a disguised, gravelly voice, he said, “Don’t worry, I’ve taken care of everyone here. Consider the cultivation resources in your pocket my payment for the service.”
He paused, tilting his masked head. “Sorry, but I don’t have a Forgetting Worry Pill, nor do I know how to refine such convenient little trinkets. I’ll have to use a more… physical method to erase your memory of our meeting.”
While Miura Yumiko stared in stunned confusion, Nagumo raised his hand and delivered a sharp, precise karate chop to the side of her neck.
Thump!
Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she slumped over, instantly unconscious.
Nagumo held the hand-knife pose for a moment, a thought suddenly occurring to him. He could have just used the power of his Magnetic Field Arts to selectively erase this specific memory segment.
He glanced at the unconscious Miura Yumiko.
‘Forget it,’he thought with a mental shrug.’This ordeal was part of her fated tribulation.’
He moved on, finding several of his other classmates, all of them part of Miura Yumiko’s social circle. They were all tied up just as securely.
Unfortunately, unlike Yumiko, who had cleverly hidden her belongings, everyone else’s storage bags had already been looted by the cultists.
One person, however, provided a pleasant surprise. Hayama Hayato, true to his status as a young master from a wealthy family, had hidden a Storage Ring, and its internal space was impressively large.
The cultivation resources inside were plentiful. The spirit stones alone were enough to fund three full simulations. Not to mention the other rare materials, which could probably be exchanged for another five simulation attempts if sold on the black market.
Nagumo also noticed two distinct tear tracks staining the boy’s face, and his clothes were torn in several places.
As for these classmates, Nagumo showed no mercy. Just as he had with Miura Yumiko, he delivered a crisp hand-knife strike to each of their heads, physically erasing their recent memories.
Afterward, he took a moment to read Hayama Hayato’s surface thoughts.
He quickly understood how they had been captured. They had gone to a KTV for a night of singing, and the next thing they knew, they had all fainted. When they woke up, they were here.
Within the boy’s memories, Nagumo saw the hazy figures of several muscular men. He saw them performing a certain… inhumane ‘exercise.’
Now Nagumo understood why those cultists had been so surprisingly wealthy. It turned out they had just finished a very profitable robbery.
He offered three seconds of silence for Hayama Hayato. He hadn’t expected the guy to suffer the same fate as Bai Cinan, though this particular ‘treatment’ had been mercifully short—only two hours. Compared to Bai Cinan’s three months, it was a fleeting moment.
With his work here done, Nagumo made his way to the cult’s treasury.
His eyes swept over crates of spirit stones, vials of demon beast and fierce beast blood, jars of their crystalline cores, and even some precious healing pills. A pill furnace sat in one corner, looking quite valuable—and in fact, it was.
Alchemy… It was a game for the obscenely wealthy or the exceptionally gifted. The failure rate for beginners was astronomical.
Most, he found a stack of high-quality talisman paper and a large pile of materials for inscription.
Nagumo didn’t hesitate. He converted all the spirit stones and beast cores in the warehouse into system credit, though he made sure to leave a portion behind for the arriving Regulatory Group to find.
He picked up a random burner phone from a fallen cultist, put on the voice of a concerned citizen to report the location, and then crushed the device in his hand.
He quickly hopped onto his Mengdeng 125 scooter and sped off toward another known Beast God Cult stronghold.
It was a small, unassuming restaurant in a busy downtown area. As he approached, he saw a few people walking out, grumbling about how terrible the food was.
Nagumo slipped inside, a silent shadow.
After knocking out and disabling everyone within, he fed all their demon cores, beast cores, and spirit stones to the system. He then picked up another phone from one of his victims and made a second police report.
Continuing his journey on the Mengdeng 125, deftly editing surveillance footage as he drove, he arrived at a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the city.
After these three ‘robbing the rich to help the poor’ sessions, his simulation count had already soared to seventy.
He picked up a phone, made the call, and crushed it, the routine now second nature.
Only one target remained. He had to ride his Mengdeng 125 to the location of the Elder—the very site where the enemy was preparing to set up their sacrificial array node.
A bar called Red Romance.
Arriving at the back alley, he saw a low-level lackey emerging from a rear door to take out the trash.
Nagumo appeared behind the man and engaged him in a ‘heartfelt’ exchange, reading his memory in the process.
Inside the bar’s hidden basement room, the heavily injured Beast God Cult Elder was sitting cross-legged. His arm was no longer human; in its place was a grotesque, furry paw that seemed to belong to some monstrous beast. His entire body was enveloped in a sickly, black-red mist.
A circle of corpses lay around him. To be more precise, they were a circle of shriveled, mummified corpses.
The door to the secret room creaked open, casting a sliver of light into the oppressive gloom. A few cultist lackeys shuffled in, dragging a group of young, beautiful women into the chamber. They didn’t linger, hurriedly packing up the desiccated corpses before retreating back outside as quickly as they could.
The young women, all bound and gagged, looked at their horrifying surroundings in abject terror, their bodies trembling as they tried in vain to escape.
The Beast God Cult Elder’s eyes snapped open, and the black-red aura around him receded. He opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of dark, clotted blood. Wiping the stain from the corner of his lips, he snarled through gritted teeth, “Those damned regulators. It’s been three years, and my injuries show no sign of recovery! They’ve even worsened, and my cultivation has regressed!”
Then, his expression twisted into one of fanatical glee. “But it matters not! As long as tomorrow’s plan succeeds and I devour this entire city, along with the bloodline talent of those Bursting Bear Princes, I can restore my strength and forge an ultimate foundation! My power will soar to an even higher realm!”
His face shifted again as his gaze fell upon the terrified young women. A lecherous, cruel smile spread across his lips.
“Don’t worry,” he cooed. “Being able to offer your lives to me is your greatest honor. My ascension to immortality is the same as your own.”
He was only halfway through his sentence when a sharp, unbelievable pain erupted in his chest.
He looked down. A hand had emerged from his sternum, clutching his still-beating heart. The hand squeezed, and his heart was crushed into pulp right before his eyes, the resulting spray of blood splattering across his face.
The Beast God Cult Elder didn’t waste a moment on thought; his Nascent Soul instantly shot out from his cranium.
Only one word filled his mind: Escape.
As long as he escaped, there was still hope. As for fighting his attacker, the thought was ludicrous. Someone who could approach him so silently, completely ignoring the complex web of defensive arrays he had set up, was absolutely not an opponent he could defeat.
As long as he escaped and stayed alive, there would always be other opportunities.
Nagumo watched the departing Nascent Soul with cold indifference. He reached out, and his hand became a giant construct of crackling lightning.
He gripped the fleeing soul tightly in his palm and, with a gentle squeeze, crushed it into nothingness.
With the threat eliminated, he began to loot the body.
He quickly discovered that this Beast God Cult Elder was disappointingly poor. There were only five Mid-grade Spirit Stones on his person and not a single pill. It was less than the resource stipend he received every month from the military.
Nagumo’s gaze swept over the people who were tied up.
Their faces showed expressions of dazed joy, though some were still filled with lingering panic.
One of them, however, was looking at him very calmly.
Nagumo noticed her and realized she was an acquaintance. Looking at her expensive, tailored outfit, he figured the Beast God Cult must be completely brain-dead. They hadn’t even recognized who they had kidnapped; if they had, they would have found a way to squeeze a fortune out of her family.
An idea began to form in Nagumo’s mind. Perhaps he could squeeze a fortune out of her.
He strode over and crouched down, looking directly into her calm, dark eyes.
“You’re not afraid of me?”
Because her mouth was gagged, Shinomiya Kaguya could only make muffled, indignant sounds. Her meaning was perfectly clear: Untie me first, you brute.
Nagumo gave a casual wave of his hand.
The rope tied around Shinomiya Kaguya’s mouth snapped.
Before Nagumo could even think to remove the foul-smelling rag, Kaguya impatiently spat it out of her mouth herself.
After two heaving gags, a rainbow of vomit erupted from her mouth.
Nagumo watched the uncontrollably retching Shinomiya Kaguya and then glanced at the discarded rag on the floor. No wonder he had smelled a peculiar stench when he walked over.
It turned out the cloth gagging her mouth wasn’t actually a cloth.
It was a pair of crusty, smelly socks that hadn’t been washed for who knows how long. They carried the distinct, salty stench of old sweat.
That pungent, sour taste was simply unbelievable. It shared a similar ‘charm’ with a certain brand of sauerkraut known for being fermented by bare feet.