The twin boss duo of Demon Princess and Yasha actually appeared in the original Streets of Rage. However, back then, their designs were quite plain. With slender, well-proportioned figures, they looked absolutely nothing like their Streets of Rage III redesigns, which transformed them into explosively curvy, spandex-wearing cyberpunk girls.
Accompanying their drastic physical changes was a massive overhaul of their combat capabilities.
With the game's iterations and updated assets, they gained jumping agility far surpassing their original incarnations. They possessed explosively powerful kicks, highly synchronized combat coordination, standard ground-traveling shockwave attacks, and combination skills that could only be unleashed when both twins were present.
Whether in reality or video games, there often exists a mysterious connection between twins. As a result, certain skills originating from game blueprints yielded far better effects only when utilized by genuine twins, optimally identical twins.
Clearly, the two players who had changed their Heaven's Selection IDs to Demon Princess and Yasha fell straight into this category.
Through sheer luck equivalent to finding a buried treasure in a flea market, the duo had successfully acquired combination skills dropped by the actual Demon Princess and Yasha boss duo, allowing them to achieve a synergy where one plus one was far greater than two. Yet, this ability, which should have been enough to pull off extreme comebacks, had been immediately called out and dismantled by Chris.
Chris's ability to expose their secret actually boiled down to a simple process of keyword stacking and mental search: purple spandex, female twins, ground-traveling shockwaves. His brain automatically localized the search parameters to Streets of Rage. To him, making such a deduction was as natural as eating or drinking. Yet, no one else in the entire Heaven's Selection Space was capable of doing the same.
Because no one else possessed Chris's massive, "Mind Palace" level of gaming knowledge, knowledge that felt tailor-made for the Heaven's Selection Space.
The twin players' already fragile psychological defenses completely collapsed. The word "Escape" overwhelmed their brains.
If a veteran player had seen through their disguise, they could have rationalized it as the opponent being vastly experienced. But to be instantly seen through by a complete rookie who, theoretically, was only on his second dungeon? The implications behind that thought were beginning to make them shudder uncontrollably.
This wasn't a case of a naive child parading through the market holding a brick of gold. This was clearly a premeditated trap set purely to hunt the two of them!
Just which Guild had the resources and foresight to orchestrate a setup this elaborate?!
Was it Blood Dawn? The Blue Flame Brotherhood? Or maybe The Supreme Card Gamers? It couldn't possibly be Swords, Magic, and Crossdressing Mountains, right?!
A rapid succession of player guilds they had directly or indirectly offended flashed through their minds. Then, under the gaze of Chris, whose arm hung loosely as he prepared his next move, and Irene, who was knocking a fresh arrow, the twins began to simultaneously step backward.
The twins had completely lost their will to fight.
Even though they still possessed innate abilities and equipment skills capable of causing Chris massive trouble, their only remaining thought was to flee.
Because Chris's positioning had severed any possibility of the sisters regrouping, they didn't harbor any delusional thoughts of "dying together." Instead, they decisively opted to split up, run, and find a chance to reunite later.
"Oh? Trying to run?"
The twins' sudden flight caught Chris slightly off guard, though he had already quietly adjusted his equipped gear. Immediately, his right arm whipped out, cracking the air like the Vampire Killer whip he had wielded before. A split-second later, Captain America's Shield, which had been embedded in the dumpster, actively ricocheted straight back into his hand.
Conversely, Demon Princess had already seized the opportunity to sprint over ten meters away. Her footwork was incredibly erratic, incorporating sprints, leaps, and even wall-bounces, her speed increasing exponentially with every passing second.
This was Chris's first time properly encountering a player specialized in high Agility. He immediately realized that, with [Flash Charge] currently on cooldown, relying on his own two thick legs, bolstered by a mere 12 points of Agility, was absolutely insufficient to chase her down.
Furthermore, the magic missile from the [Polymorph] spell not only required a one-second channel time, but it also had a fixed flight trajectory, making the probability of hitting such an agile target miniscule. Therefore, the only viable option left to Chris was to once again hurl Captain America's Shield, which possessed a significantly faster projectile speed.
However, Chris didn't hold out much hope for its success.
True enough, just as the younger sister Yasha possessed the "Bushin-ryu Cyclone Kick", a health-draining safety skill, the older sister Demon Princess possessed her own safety skill. It was templated from the move 'Yellow Cyclone,' a skill belonging to Mustapha Cairo (often referred to by players simply as the 'Yellow Hat') in the classic beat 'em up Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.
Right as the shield was about to slice into the back of Demon Princess's head, the older twin, without shedding a single ounce of momentum, launched herself into a mid-air yellow cyclone, or rather, a purple cyclone. She outright kicked the thrown shield away upon impact.
Thoroughly traumatized by Main Blueprint Missions, the twins might have lacked a diverse offensive skill pool, but they certainly didn't lack safety maneuvers and escape methods.
Chris didn't waste any more time giving chase. Dealing with high-Agility enemies like this, lacking a properly enclosed environment, made securing a kill genuinely difficult. For a player who had only ever cleared the tutorial trial, he functionally lacked any further means to restrict their mobility.
So this is the gap between myself and veteran players? The Heaven's Selection Space really is fascinating.
Completely unaware that he had literally terrified his opponents out of their wits, Chris was clearly smiling. Far from being discouraged, he immediately pushed "how to restrict high-Agility units" to the absolute top of his daily agenda.
Players were like that. They didn't fear encountering enemies they couldn't handle immediately. As long as they survived and were given a chance to review the footage and analyze the encounter, they would tailor a hyper-specific counter to crush that enemy to death in the future.
However, just as Chris decisively abandoned the futile pursuit, the disappointingly beautiful archer chose that exact moment to drop her concealment. Leaping down from a structure a full eight stories high, just as her shapely, muscular thighs were about to snap like dry sugarcane on impact, a sudden gust of fierce wind erupted beneath her, keeping her airborne to hover for several seconds before landing lightly on the concrete.
In Irene's hand rested an emerald-green longbow, complemented by a quiver of matching green arrows slung across her back. The fresh scent of pristine nature instantly invaded Chris's nostrils.
Nocking an arrow onto the bowstring, Irene first shot Chris an irritated pout, gesturing for him to back off and not ruin her aim. Then, the muscles in her arms and thighs instantly locked tight, the previously hidden muscular definition visibly bulging beneath her clothes. She drew the bowstring to its absolute limit, the arrowhead, radiating both nature and death, locking dead onto Demon Princess's retreating back.
In the next second, a critical strike wreathed in a tempest was violently unleashed,
Fusion Combat Arte! Powerful Storm Shot!
Having sensed an approaching fatal danger, Demon Princess had preemptively crushed a "Power Word: Shield - Enchantment Scroll" from her inventory. Cloaked in a golden barrier capable of absorbing massive damage, she only had enough time to register a terrifying, overwhelming force impacting her from behind before her vision plunged into eternal darkness.
Demon Princess's corpse, the chest cavity blown completely wide open, was pinned violently against the heavy steel doors of the abandoned factory. The tempest carrying the corpse sprayed her blood evenly across the metal, forming a grotesque, crimson cyclone pattern. It made the dead Demon Princess look less like a PKer and more like a macabre sacrifice. The entire scene was brutally visceral, highly stylized, and possessed an oddly philosophical aesthetic weight.
Following this, a Treasure Box radiating a scarlet hue materialized from Demon Princess's corpse, tumbling lonely to the ground.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]