Chapter 16: Treatment Room No. 2
“Do they… feel pain?” Su Qiong stared at A in shock.
IF’s level of realism was practically one hundred percent. Even the disposable mimicry NPCs felt pain just like ordinary humans. Back in Gangan Village, the NPCs beaten to death by Those Who Obey Me Win had cried, felt terror, and begged for mercy.
But the monsters in this hospital were like walking corpses, entirely devoid of souls.
“They can feel pain. Look over there,” A pointed his chin toward the elevator.
One person was left inside the metal box. He had been crushed at the very bottom of the human brick, and his leg had been violently trampled and broken in the chaos. Because his thigh hadn’t completely liquefied yet, the solid bone remained intact. The fractured edge had pierced straight through his skin, protruding into the air in a gruesome, bloody mess.
Clutching his shattered leg, the patient rolled across the floor, his face twisted in absolute agony.
A few minutes later, once he had grown somewhat accustomed to the blinding pain, he clenched his medical chart between his teeth and dragged his mangled body out of the elevator. His fingernails dug fiercely into the marble tiles, leaving long, bloody streaks across the floor.
Su Qiong drifted forward, wanting to help him up, but A raised an arm to block him.
“It’s useless. He doesn’t need your help.”
“Why?” Su Qiong asked, confused.
“For the same reason they risked their lives to crush themselves into that elevator. Compared to physical pain, the patients here care far more about their spot in line to see the doctor.”
Even though the doctors literally did nothing but tell them to “drink more hot water” and hand out cheap glucose tablets as fake medicine, the patients still worshipped them like gods. They acted as if they would instantly die if they didn’t get their turn.
Su Qiong watched the man drag himself to the door of a consultation room. The moment he reached it, he suddenly sprang up, bursting with energy as if experiencing a miraculous final breath of life.
Su Qiong couldn’t understand it at all. Uh… well, I respect their lifestyle choices. I wish them the best.
“Let’s analyze the clues. I just triggered a system hint,” Su Qiong said, opening his black bracelet and sharing the screen with A.
[Clues for clearing the instance: 1. The hospital’s full official name. 2. The Critical Care Ward. 3. The medical charts.]
[Warning: Please use the clues in the exact listed order. Otherwise, you will bear the consequences.]
“The hospital’s full name?” A stared at the interface, his dark eyes turning freezing cold.
Only now, on his fourth day in this hellhole, did A realize a terrifying fact: despite tearing through every corner of the building, he had never once seen its official name written anywhere.
He had originally assumed the IF system had just been lazy and forgotten to name the building. He hadn’t expected it to be the primary clue. This game was far more twisted and intricate than he had realized.
“When we walked downstairs, I looked at all the signs, the medical charts, and listened to conversations. The full name never popped up,” Su Qiong said thoughtfully. “There must be a major secret hidden in the name.”
He thought back to how the name of the Sun-Moon River had constantly warped and changed in Gangan Village. Even after he left, Su Qiong still wasn’t entirely sure what the river was actually called.
“Mm. Following the system’s order, we have to find the name first,” A agreed.
“How are we supposed to find it?” Su Qiong asked helplessly. “Since the system made it a major clue, it definitely won’t be easy to find.”
“If we can’t find it, we’ll ask someone,” A said simply.
“Huh?” Su Qiong looked around at the bustling hallway. …It doesn’t seem like you can ask anyone. Are you expecting me to do it?
Understanding the implication, Su Qiong obediently reached out a puffy hand to stop a patient walking past.
“Hello—ah!”
Before Su Qiong could finish his greeting, the patient walked straight through him, completely ignoring him and nearly knocking the frail marshmallow into the air. The patient’s expression didn’t change at all, acting as if he hadn’t bumped into a “person.”
A caught Su Qiong by the collar before he could float away. “Oh. Just as I expected.”
“You already guessed that would happen?! Then why did you make me try?!”
“I never told you to try. You rushed over on your own,” A replied, delivering the words of an absolute scumbag.
“…” Su Qiong puffed up his non-existent cheeks in anger and decided to give A the silent treatment for exactly five seconds.
Ignoring the sulking marshmallow, A continued, “Actually, there is a way to make them notice us.”
Su Qiong instantly forgot his anger. “What is it? Is it dangerous?!”
“Not particularly,” A flexed his long fingers casually. “We might only die.”
Su Qiong: ??? How the hell is that not particularly dangerous?!
Before Su Qiong could yell at him, A clenched his fist and slammed it heavily into the massive glass water station in the center of the lobby.
The reinforced glass shattered. Water burst out in a tidal wave, instantly accompanied by furious, hysterical shrieking and roaring.
“Ahhh! Our water!”
The patients, who valued water more than their own lives, lunged forward like wild animals. They clawed frantically at the puddles, desperately trying to scoop the spilling water off the floor. When they realized they couldn’t save it, their faces twisted into pure terror. Dozens of people dropped to their stomachs and began frantically licking the dirty tiles like dogs.
Others turned their rabid anger toward A, screaming at him furiously.
“Are you insane?! Look what you’ve done!” “Security! Where’s security?! Arrest him!”
The hospital instance strictly forbade players from using abilities or weapons during the day. Because the hospital treated water as its most precious resource, the drinking station was built with prison-grade reinforced steel and bank-vault glass. An ordinary human punching it would deal 0.1 damage to the tank and 800 damage to their own hand.
But A was far from ordinary. He shattered the fortress effortlessly, scraping only a tiny sliver of skin off his knuckles.
The moment he pulled his fist back, blaring red alarms echoed throughout the entire hospital.
Within seconds, dozens of hulking men wearing green uniforms and red armbands swarmed out of the hallways, completely surrounding A and Su Qiong.
“Target located! Target located!” the security captain shouted into his walkie-talkie.
A hysterical roar blasted back through the radio. “The patient’s condition has deteriorated! Take him to Treatment Room No. 2 immediately!”
“Understood!” The captain waved a baton. The dozens of guards closed in, forcing A and Su Qiong into a dark corner of the first floor.
“Wait. Why can they suddenly notice you?” Su Qiong whispered.
“Here.” A pulled the exam paper from his pocket and pointed to a line of tiny text at the bottom.
[During the day, players must strictly obey hospital regulations. Any player who violates the rules must receive treatment from their attending physician.] [Note: Treatment methods are extreme and may result in player death. This is a realistic instance. Death constitutes failure to clear the instance.]
“Another realistic instance,” Su Qiong muttered weakly. “Each realistic instance is less realistic than the last. Is there something wrong with IF’s grading system?”
“Even if there is, what can we do about it?” A didn’t care. He coolly pocketed the paper.
The security guards didn’t use the elevator or the stairs. Instead, they forced A through a hidden, vertical access shaft inside the security room to climb to the second floor.
The narrow, pitch-black shaft was surprisingly the driest and best-ventilated place in the entire building. Even with Su Qiong’s limited senses, he found the rest of the hospital uncomfortably damp; the marshmallow had felt like he was constantly on the verge of shrinking.
The shaft was barely two feet wide, allowing only one person to climb at a time. Freezing gusts of wind blew from both above and below, blowing Su Qiong’s bandages into a chaotic mess.
Gripping the metal rungs, Su Qiong swayed in the wind and analyzed the situation. “Since this secret passage connects between floors, do you think it might hold a clue to the fifth level?”
“You’re going to be disappointed,” A said from above him. “There are no clues in here. I came through this shaft once before. It only leads to one place: Treatment Room No. 2. Which serves as this hospital’s…”
“…punishment room.”
The moment he finished speaking, they emerged from the shaft. The captain shoved them into a room radiating a terrifying, ominous aura.
Treatment Room No. 2 was entirely different from the other rooms on the floor. The door was painted a thick, viscous, blood-like black. Strange electronic beeps echoed from within, accompanied by a freezing aura of pure death.
Su Qiong was absolutely certain this room hadn’t existed when he peeked onto the second floor earlier.
The captain shoved the door open, threw A inside, and slammed it shut.
Click— The door locked heavily from the outside.
Taking advantage of his weak presence, Su Qiong slipped inside right behind A before the door shut.
There was only one doctor and two nurses inside. Their bodies were grotesque and semi-liquid. Under the dim, flickering yellow lights, their facial features slowly melted and slid down their skulls, stretching their eyes and mouths into horrific, elongated shapes.
Terrifying surgical instruments were lined up on a metal tray beside them. Next to the tray sat a three-tiered rack packed with jars of bizarre chemicals.
But the worst part was the modified medical machines surrounding the treatment bed. There was a pacemaker wired to pump three times the lethal amount of voltage, a dialysis machine modified to drain all the blood from a human body in minutes, and a defibrillator converted into an execution-style electric chair.
Seeing the room again, A’s dark eyes grew freezing cold as he recalled a very unpleasant past experience.
The melted doctor fixed his sliding eyes on A. “Lie down. I am going to treat you now.”
“What is the full name of this hospital?” A asked directly, ignoring the command.
“You’ve already started speaking nonsense. It appears your condition is even more serious than I expected. You must receive treatment immediately,” the doctor forced a wet, distorted smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll definitely cure you.”
“If I cooperate with the treatment, will you answer my question?” A pressed.
The doctor didn’t reply. He and the nurses turned their backs and began prepping the torture equipment.
The doctor slowly drew a thick, glowing purple liquid into a massive syringe. “I can’t understand what you’re saying,” he murmured to himself. “I’m sorry, but I can only understand the words of healthy patients.”
Understanding the terrifying implication, A stepped forward, preparing to lie down on the bed.
“Hey,” Su Qiong grabbed A’s sleeve, pulling him back. “You’ve been here before. Does the treatment hurt?”
A instinctively opened his mouth to say no.
He was an orphan. He had no family or friends and had been raised from childhood as a living weapon. Over the years, A had been forged into an indestructible, unfeeling instrument. Every trait that made him a “person” had been stripped away piece by piece.
Go without sleep. Endure all pain. Never expose a single vulnerability.
But looking down at the concerned little marshmallow, A suddenly realized something. Perhaps he had never cried out in pain because no one had ever bothered to ask him, Does it hurt?
“…It does,” A answered honestly. Although saying so wouldn’t change anything—
“Then take off your hospital gown. We’ll switch!” Su Qiong whispered urgently, checking to make sure the doctor’s back was still turned. “I have the Mimicry Cloak. Once it absorbs your aura, it can easily fool these brainless NPCs.”
For the very first time in his life, A hesitated. “The treatment is extremely dangerous. You—”
“Hurry up!” Su Qiong aggressively tugged the gown off A, wrapping himself in his gray cloak and clumsily pulling the striped gown over his puffy body.
Once dressed, Su Qiong puffed out his little chest proudly. “I won’t feel any pain, because I never bought the sensory upgrade for pain!”
Before A could argue, Su Qiong noticed the doctor starting to turn around. Without thinking, he lifted a squishy leg and kicked A as hard as he could.
A, the most terrifying, unstoppable human weapon on Earth, was casually kicked into the corner by a marshmallow.
How humiliating.
The doctor turned around and approached the bed, completely failing to notice the switch.
He ordered a nurse to strap Su Qiong’s puffy white arm down. He grabbed the massive syringe and plunged it into Su Qiong, injecting the glowing purple chemical.
The liquid simply soaked into Su Qiong’s outer bandages. He just felt a little damp.
Because he had no physical biology, his code couldn’t absorb poison. Any chemical injected into him could easily be wrung out like a wet towel later.
Next, the doctor grabbed a fistful of electrode pads and slapped them all over Su Qiong’s round belly. He was just reaching for a thick plastic feeding tube to shove down Su Qiong’s throat, when—
Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
The medical machines suddenly blared with error notifications. The lights in the treatment room violently flickered, died completely, and snapped back on.
When the lights stabilized, every single machine in the room began emitting a flat, piercing dial tone simultaneously.
The doctor slowly turned his head to look at the monitors.
On the display panels, the green lines tracking heart rate, respiration, and brain activity had all flatlined to zero.
“H-he’s dead?!” The doctor’s melting pupils shook violently, his liquid brain trembling in absolute terror.
