Chapter 801: Memories of Death
Should I give up resisting?
Facing the hail of bullets shot at her, such thoughts occasionally surfaced in her mind, but Ai Li ultimately suppressed this tempting idea.
— There was still a mission to complete, and dying prematurely before that seemed a bit irresponsible.
Moreover… could mere pistol bullets truly kill her? Ai Li was skeptical.
"It's not like I haven't been shot before," Ai Li muttered to herself. "In Academy City's medical technology, gunshots are not considered fatal wounds."
It was precisely because she had no fear in her heart that Ai Li's actions remained calm and composed from beginning to end.
From a God's perspective, this girl was simply playing hide-and-seek with the gunmen with only a shelf separating them, and the direct distance between her and the enemy was less than half a meter!
...38, 39, 40!
Ai Li silently counted the seconds while playing "hide-and-seek."
Because she was calm enough, while playing "hide-and-seek," she constantly made sure to maintain a specific distance from one of the gunmen.
— Distance within one meter, duration forty seconds, condition met.
— "Thought Mapping," activate!
The man in the suit across the shelf suddenly let out a startled cry, followed by blood gushing from his seven orifices, as if he had run into an invisible wall head-on, finally collapsing limply.
"Is he still alive? No, he's finished."
Ai Li ignored the fallen enemy and quickly moved towards her next target.
Theoretically, as long as one's will is firm enough, one will not die.
But in reality, there are very few survivors among those who are hit.
— Ai Li's title of "Ace Killer" was earned this way.
"For this next one, let's use poison," the girl quietly approached a man in a suit from behind and patted him.
The man in the suit fell to the ground in response, gagging painfully, then quickly stopped moving…
Like playing a ghost-catching game, the girl moved flexibly within the convenience store, quietly approaching one prey after another, then touching and leaving.
Wrist-cutting, hanging, poisoning, drowning, electrocution, falling from a building…
Ai Li had tried all sorts of suicide methods—she had never lied about this.
Although, whether due to good luck or bad luck, she survived every time, and didn't even suffer any particularly serious sequelae.
However, those repeated "near-death experiences" were genuinely etched into her memory.
Then, they transformed into nourishment, becoming her most powerful weapon when she worked as a "killer."
Library unregistered esper ability—"Thought Mapping."
The ability's effect is to forcibly impose the esper's own personal experiences and sensations onto the target, and then the target's body will be affected by specific "thought information," producing corresponding changes.
For example, if Ai Li sends her memory of cutting her wrist to the target, then after the target receives this memory information, his body will also show "wrist-cutting" injuries.
Other memory information such as falling from a building, drowning, or poisoning is based on the same principle.
— Human imagination has power, which is also a manifestation of "personal reality interfering with the real world."
So, it's no wonder her agent suspected that Ai Li's continuous attempts at "suicide" were actually to collect material.
The agent even suspected that Ai Li deliberately endured bullying to collect some "non-fatal material."
The final result was—excluding esper ability factors, Ai Li, who was in all respects just an ordinary middle school girl, brutally killed the gunmen who came to surround her using various elaborate methods.
No, there was still one survivor—the one brought down by the "poisoning" memory.
Memory information could not, after all, produce real poison; there was no toxin in this man's body, so he recovered.
"Devil… this is a devil…" The awakened man looked terrified and struggled to crawl out of the store.
Ai Li caught up in a few steps and reached out to caress the man's cheek: "You look very tired, so… sleep."
— There was also the experience of taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
After everything quieted down, Ai Li stood up and looked around.
She was the only one left standing in the convenience store.
The store clerk had already seen the bad situation and fled—when these men in suits came in.
"Breakfast, breakfast," Ai Li remembered the purpose of her visit to the store and quickly returned inside.
While choosing her preferred breakfast, she took out her phone and called her agent back.
The agent on the other end was also quick; he had already found out that these men in suits were gunmen hired by the information broker, and their trip seemed to be for revenge for a colleague who had been assassinated a few days ago.
"To be retaliated against, and with such a quick reaction," the agent said with lingering fear, "it seems we've gotten involved in something quite troublesome this time!"
"Trouble…" Ai Li was at the cashier, scanning her own items to check out, when she suddenly heard the bell at the convenience store entrance.
"It's certainly troublesome—I haven't even had breakfast yet."
Only then did a man in a wheelchair and two girls in Tokiwadai Middle School uniforms appear at the entrance.
"It seems there's no need to ask further," Lin Wuming said, seeing the tragic scene of "bodies strewn everywhere" inside the convenience store.
He and Hu Feng Toumi were fine; they could be said to be well-traveled and had long been accustomed to "bodies."
But Misaka Mikoto couldn't quite handle it; despite being a Level 5 esper, she was just an ordinary girl in this regard.
Even if she had already prepared herself mentally, she still felt physically uncomfortable when she actually saw the gruesome scene.
Misaka Mikoto covered her mouth and couldn't help but take a step back.
Actually, Misaka Mikoto couldn't be blamed for being too delicate; it was simply because the man in the suit lying by the storefront had died in an overly gruesome manner.
He had died from a "fall from a building," and his entire body was like a smashed tomato, splattered everywhere.
It could only be said that Lin Wuming, Hu Feng Toumi, and Ai Li, who remained unfazed by this scene, were the abnormal ones.
Looking at the frail girl before him, Lin Wuming also became increasingly serious.
He couldn't help but feel fortunate in his heart—it was correct that Shokuhou Misaki had left just now; this Ai Li was truly somewhat bizarre, and he couldn't let Shokuhou Misaki, who had no direct combat ability, come into direct contact with her!
"Lin Wuming," Ai Li broke the silence first.
"It's me," Lin Wuming nodded, then asked, "You're Ai Li, the killer?"
"It's me," Ai Li said, holding the breakfast food she had just selected, and walked towards Lin Wuming. "I received a mission; the target is you, Lin Wuming."
Bzzzt! Bzzzt!
Before Lin Wuming and Hu Feng Toumi could react, Misaka Mikoto had already taken action first.
She couldn't stand it in many aspects!
— A quick battle, defeat this killer, and then immediately leave this cursed place!
Misaka Mikoto didn't care about much, manipulating the shelves in the store to surround Ai Li.
