Volume 15 Gray Fog Forest Chapter 779 Knife
In this situation, Asano Akira could not choose to retreat or change his tactics as he did just now. Once he removed the force from the tip of the knife, it would be the opponent's turn to thrust through his body.
In a tit-for-tat move, whoever retreats first loses.
But just when Asano Akira was about to give up and burst out with all his strength, the unshakable power coming from the tip of the knife suddenly disappeared!
Although he didn't know why the other party chose to retreat, this was obviously a rare opportunity. There was no reason for Asano Akira to give up. He stabbed his sword forward, and a "sword energy" that almost condensed into a solid object burst out from the tip of the sword!
However, Asano Akira did not feel the breakthrough sensation when the sharp blade pierced the flesh, and the powerful sword energy completely hit nothing - the swordsman who was confronting him a moment ago seemed to have disappeared out of thin air... There was nothing behind the thick fog.
Immediately afterwards, a stronger sense of crisis completely enveloped him - behind him... no, not only behind him, but also on the left and right, and above his head... a total of eight directions, eight sharp murderous intentions attacked Asano Akira.
There is more than one enemy!!
Asano Akira felt the hairs on his back suddenly stand up. Used to keeping silent, he let out a low roar from his throat, twisted his body forcefully, held the knife in one hand and the sheath in the other, and swung to both sides with the "reverse circular cutting" momentum of the double sword style.
He could feel tearing pain in the muscles of his arms, back, and abdomen, but the movement of swinging the knife did not change at all. At the critical moment, he successfully blocked the sharp blades coming from eight directions.
But at the moment when Asano Akira completed this extreme defense, the ninth murderous intent suddenly broke out from the ground under his feet and headed straight for his left rib!
The brief moment of exhaustion and the time to adjust his breathing when he was finishing the move left him no time to defend against the final killing move. He could only let the sharp blade pierce through his ribs, pierce through his heart, and then come out of his throat...
“I lost…?”
"Is this... the end for me?"
"It seems that death is not so painful..."
…
…
It was unknown how long it took for Asano Akira to wake up from his coma. His body twitched a few times, and he slowly regained consciousness. However, wherever his thoughts reached, everything was bright red. His throat seemed to be strangled by something, and it was extremely difficult to breathe. His lungs and trachea constantly felt like they were on fire, as if he had swallowed a mouthful of hot molten iron, and the burning sensation was about to burst through his chest.
"I can still... feel pain... I'm not dead? Cough cough cough!"
Asano Akira shuddered suddenly, and his body, which was originally lying flat on the ground, suddenly curled up and began to cough violently.
He turned over with some difficulty, supported himself on the ground with his elbows and knees, and took a deep breath.
The air smelled very sour, with a hint of the residue left after the oxygen generator had fully reacted, and the oxygen content in it was very low, which did not relieve the burning sensation in the respiratory tract at all.
Asano Akira calmed himself down, and only then did he realize that the bright red that his mind tentacles had "seen" before was actually the warning words on the screen inside the breathing mask. It was just that when he woke up just now, his brain was still in a semi-downtime state, so he felt that the whole world was bloody.
"Warning: The oxygen generator is exhausted, please replace it in time."
"Warning: Less than 15% oxygen remaining, danger!"
"Warning: Remaining oxygen level less than 5%, danger!"
"Warning: Less than 1% oxygen remaining..."
Asano Akira quickly took out a new can of oxygen generator from his backpack and replaced it with another one. He also injected a quick-acting catalyst into the can. The bright red oxygen content number inside the mask began to rise. In just five seconds, it changed from red to yellow, and then to green, which represented "safe".
Asano Akira took several deep breaths, and the burning sensation in his respiratory tract finally felt a little relieved.
He couldn't help but feel fortunate. If he had woken up a few minutes later, he would probably never have woken up.
He was just a little bit away from death by suffocation.
His condition recovered a little, and Asano Akira's mind, which was extremely confused due to coma and lack of oxygen, gradually calmed down. He soon realized that something was wrong.
He clearly remembered that before he fell into a coma, a sharp blade pierced his left rib, and the blade pierced his throat and heart at the same time. Logically speaking, he could not be alive...
But now, apart from some burning sensation in the trachea and lungs, there was no pain in the throat, chest or ribs. He reached out and touched the protective suit on his left ribs, and found no damage.
Asano Akira sat cross-legged and fell into deep thought.
Could it be that... everything that just happened was still an illusion?
But the feeling of collision from the sword was so real, and the murderous intent contained in those sharp blades... Even though I knew at that time that these things were illusions, I would still choose to block them instead of letting these "fake" swords pierce through my body.
The illusion was too real, so real that it blurred the boundary between fantasy and reality. Asano Akira couldn't tell whether there was a real sword hidden among those "fake" swords.
"Is it this thick fog that is causing the trouble?" Asano Akira stretched out his palm and moved it gently. Through the thin and tough gloves, he could feel something flowing through. It was a fog that was as solid as liquid. Being in it was more like being in a container filled with low-density liquid.
However, even if the Gray Mist Forest can create bewitching illusions, the murderous intent is real... When Asano Akira thinks back on it now, the muscles all over his body will involuntarily tense up, his fingers will curl up unconsciously, and he subconsciously wants to grasp the hilt of the knife.
Wait...where's the knife?
He was startled and reached out to feel the ground around him, but he felt nothing.
If he had just fainted due to hallucination, the sword should have fallen not far from him... But all Asano Akira felt was soil and tiny pieces of gravel and sand embedded in the soil.
He could no longer feel his own knife...the connection linked by the tentacles of consciousness was broken.
Asano Akira had never felt so panicked... Even at the moment when he mistakenly thought he was about to die, as long as he held the knife in his hand, he was calm.
But after losing the fighting weapon that had always accompanied him, he found it difficult to calm down... He wanted to expand the search area, but was afraid of getting lost again.
If he stayed where he was, the sword might fall just a few steps away from him, but once he took a step, it might just go farther and farther away.
Then he might never be able to find his knife again.
Asano Akira's breathing became a little rapid, and the real-time heart rate displayed on the breathing mask rose from 80 beats per minute to 120, and was showing a trend of gradually increasing.
"I must find it... I must find it..." Asano Akira said silently in his heart.
He didn't look like a swordsman who had lost a weapon, but more like a child who had lost a loved one.
In a trance, he seemed to feel that the density of the fog around him had decreased. In the originally thick fog that was pitch dark, a few rays of light were faintly shining through the gaps in the tree canopy. He could even use his mental tentacles to "see" a tree stump with a mirror-like cross-section about ten meters away from him - it was the one he had just cut out when he was confirming the direction.
Just like a blindfolded person suddenly having the blindfold pulled off, the moment Asano Akira's mental tentacles extended out in all directions, he had "regained his sight".
"The visibility... has increased?" Asano Akira was full of doubts. "This should be deep in the forest... but... the visibility is almost the same as the area outside the red line..."
This change made him alert, but his eagerness to find the knife prevented him from carefully observing the surrounding environment at the first time, and instead he focused his attention on the ground.
The tentacles of his thoughts were like his sight, caressing the surrounding ground inch by inch.
The soil in this place was not very hard, and there were still a lot of footprints on it. Asano Akira could tell that these footprints belonged to him, and there was no footprint of another person at the scene. As for the sword that broke out of the ground, it was a complete illusion.
In other words, he had just been fighting with the "air" for quite some time...
But he still couldn't find his knife.
He remembered that when he fell, he was holding the handle of the knife tightly in his hand. Even if it slipped out of his hand, it shouldn't fall too far...
Within a radius of ten meters centered on where Asano Akira was standing, there was no trace of the Nino alloy sword.
"Could it be... that I threw the knife away... but my memory is confused?" Asano Akira held his forehead, "No... I can't possibly throw the knife away... especially in this place... As long as I let it go, I will lose the connection with it. I won't do that."
"The only possibility is that when I was unconscious, someone... or something, took my knife away."
Asano Akira glanced at the only man-made item on the ground: the empty can of oxygen concentrator that he had replaced. According to his daily consumption rate, a standard bottle of oxygen concentrator should last about six to eight hours. Before the battle that had just fallen into the hallucination, Asano Akira had just replaced a new bottle of oxygen concentrator, and the empty cans were inserted into the net bag on the side of the backpack.
Each bottle of oxygen generator has an independent number, so there is no possibility of confusion or misremembering. In other words, replacing the oxygen generator is a real thing that happens in reality, not an illusion.
By this calculation, he must have been unconscious for at least six to eight hours.
But the problem is that the time on the watch has only passed less than half an hour...
He leaned over to pick up the empty oxygen concentrator tank on the ground, checked it carefully, and then checked the entire breathing mask, including the pump, air pressure valve and other parts, and found no damage. So there was no possibility of "leakage".
"What happened when I was unconscious? Why did the consumption of oxygen generator increase so much... Wait..."
No, that's not right, the time on the watch cannot be trusted! Asano Akira seemed to remember something and suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.
When he got separated from Ke Lan and the others, in his memory, only a few seconds passed. Although he could feel a vague sense of being "edited", he could not find any obvious "BUG" in the process of recalling his memories. Even the time on the watch told him that only a few seconds had passed since he and Ke Lan retreated into the thick fog.
But Asano Akira's knife told him that he had taken the initiative to cut off the safety rope on his body and walked alone in the thick fog for nearly two hours.
Although Asano Akira could not explain why not only did he have no memory of those two hours, but even his watch seemed to have stopped moving during those two hours...but compared to a mechanical product like a watch, he still trusted his knife more.
"Don't trust any information you get from your own senses..." Asano Akira finally realized the horror of this forest.
In fact, up to now, except for the bombing of the two warships that crashed many years ago in the clearing in the forest, they have not encountered any substantial danger. But this does not mean that this forest is safe. Compared with this world full of illusions and false images, which makes it difficult to distinguish between reality and virtuality, Asano Akira would rather fight those terrifying monsters... At least, he does not have to doubt his own senses.
Just when Asano Akira was planning his next course of action, the tentacles of consciousness extending straight ahead captured a humanoid creature walking through the thick fog - but strangely, Asano Akira could "see" everything around this humanoid creature, including the soil, stones, and the stumps of the fog-dwelling trees, but he could only "see" a rough outline of this humanoid creature and was unable to capture any details.
He seemed to be wrapped in thick fog... No, he seemed to be made of thick fog.
But there was one thing that Asano Akira could see clearly.
In the other person's hand, he was holding the knife that belonged to him.
However, this sword could no longer resonate with Asano Akira's consciousness tentacles.
It no longer belonged to him.
An inexplicable anger suddenly rose up from Asano Akira's heart. He slowly pulled out a spare wakizashi from his waist and held it tightly in his hand...
