"Damn it."
Muttering an internal curse, Noid led the two girls back the way they came, but the staircase going up was blocked by an iron door. This must have been a well-designed cage, just waiting for him to walk into it.
"Man in black, I don't know if you have a way to escape, but the victims probably can't wait much longer."
Noid was silent for a moment before making a decision. He returned to the worship room and discovered another door at the end of the room.
"If you're scared, you can stay here."
Noid left that sentence and opened the door, which led to a secluded corridor. He didn't waste any time and started running. The two girls, still in shock, looked at each other, hesitated for a moment, and finally decided to follow him.
They also didn't want to stay in a room with a monster corpse and a pile of disgusting slime.
After running for a while, he saw the second door. Throwing the door open, the first thing that appeared before him was a large cage. Inside, a group of dooms were chained up. They were not as big as the doom he had just killed, but there were no fewer than twenty of them. All of them bared their fangs and claws, frantically charging toward the center, creating the sound of metal clashing against metal.
In the center was a mother and daughter, both clutching each other tightly. The daughter was sobbing. The mother, although she tried to look calm to protect her child, her constantly trembling back was proof of how terrified she was.
"Man in black, there's a platform under their feet. As long as one person is standing on it, the platform will stay in place."
"If no one is there... you've guessed it! Haven't you? The chains will unlock, and there will be some scenes not suitable for the faint of heart."
"Sigh, the mother wants her child to run away. But the child will be swallowed alive by the dooms. What a shame."
"So, man in black, who... will you save?"
According to what she said, he could save one or two people. The cage door wasn't locked. He just had to go in and grab one person and run, using his armor's advantage to protect the person from the teeth and bone spikes of the dooms near the entrance.
The easiest and most suitable person to protect was the daughter. Although the mother was much smaller than Noid, it would be too difficult to protect her completely.
That's what Toriel thought. It was also the most logical choice.
What would happen to the mother after Noid saved the daughter?
Toriel would not be so "kind" as to let the mother starve to death in there. Instead, she would release the dooms, so they could tear the mother to shreds in front of the man in black and her daughter.
From the very beginning, when she received the news from Garfeild, Toriel had hated the man in black. It wasn't because of any past grievances or because the man in black was an enemy of the Doom Cult. She just hated him, for no reason at all.
She wanted to see Noid's hesitant and conflicted expression as he chose who to save. And the look of horror and regret on his face as the mother was torn apart. It was a pity that Noid wore a mask, which reduced her enjoyment a little.
Toriel hated people like the man in black. She didn't just want to kill him outright. She wanted to gnaw away at his spirit and will, bit by bit, pushing her opponent to the ultimate depths of despair. To stain his soul. Then, kill him at the moment he was most hopeless. Every time she did this, Toriel felt an indescribable joy and satisfaction in her soul.
Toriel had done this many times, but this time, she misjudged Noid.
Noid ignored Toriel's words, his dark helmet completely covering his face. The mother had already seen Noid approaching, and after hearing the woman's words, it seemed the man in black in front of her had come to save them.
Hope flickered in the mother's eyes. She choked back tears and said to Noid.
"Please... please save my daughter."
"No... I don't... I don't..."
She gently stroked her daughter's head, her voice warm but resolute. For her child, a parent could give up their life.
"Be a good girl, go with that man. Remember to listen to him. Mom will stay here. As long as I keep stepping on this button, I'll be safe, remember?"
The child still wouldn't let go. Even though she was young, she felt that if she let go this time, she would never see her mother again.
All of this was broadcast to Noid. Toriel, watching from the screen, was ecstatic. The mother and daughter were even more effective than she had imagined. Even though she couldn't see the man in black's face, she could imagine how conflicted he must have been at this moment. The more conflicted he was, the more he would suffer later.
Noid, without a word, opened the cage door and went inside. Before entering, he had considered many options. He could leave the mother and daughter in there and kill the chained dooms one by one. Or he could use a heavy object to weigh down the platform and then rescue the mother and daughter... there were many feasible options.
But it all depended on the premise that the platform was a switch that unlocked the chains of the dooms.
Noid didn't dare to take the risk and didn't trust that follower. Whether a Doom Cult follower was modified or not, they were a bunch of people whose souls had been twisted into fiends. Would a fiend keep their promise? He could even imagine that everything Toriel had just said was a lie and that she could control the chains herself.
Two dooms chained near the cage lunged to attack him. A fully-grown doom like the ones on the battlefield had an average height of 1.8 meters and a length of 2 meters. These two dooms were only 1.3 meters tall and 1.5 meters long. Using his height advantage, he directly attacked them. His hand plunged into the mouth of one of them, and using the fact that the teeth and bone spikes couldn't destroy his armor, he pulled out a bunch of biological wires dyed red with fluid from deep in its throat.
The doom screamed in pain. Its scream turned into strange sounds as he pulled out its vocal cords. In response, a paralyzing baton was stabbed from its mouth, piercing its head.
He continued with the other one. The two dooms died a miserable death, their bloody corpses thrown to the side. The mother didn't feel disgusted by this bloody action; instead, her hope grew even bigger. But Noid's next words stunned her.
"Take the child out of here."
Before the mother could react, Noid was a step ahead. He grabbed both the mother and daughter and took them out of the cage. But before he could get out, the door to the room immediately slammed shut. Along with that came Toriel's hysterical scream.
"You!!! You!!! You!!! How could you do that!!!"
Noid was calm now. It seemed he had guessed correctly. This was all just a cruel game by those lunatics from the beginning.
"You're a brave girl."
He looked at the little girl, his voice gentle. He ignored the hysterical sounds coming from the speaker.
The mother had seen that no one was standing on the platform, yet the dooms were still locked up. She instantly understood what had happened. The two girls he had saved earlier had also arrived. They didn't know the situation or what to do. Noid turned around, leaving only his back to them.
"If you don't mind, could you two take care of these two for me?"
"You dare to ignore me!!!"
The sound of chains unlocking filled the air, and all the dooms in the cage were released. But Noid became calmer than ever.
"Cover the child's eyes. What's about to happen is not very suitable for children."
A dark windbreaker, a pitch-black armor, and a pair of eyes glowing with a cold green light. He charged straight into the group of dooms. He was like the cold darkness, yet he gave others the feeling of a bright and warm sun.