Chapter 19: Countdown to Death
“I’m Level 24 now. You only need to…” kill me four times.
Su Qiong shook his puffy head and muttered without a second of hesitation. “I refuse.”
“…” A closed his mouth, glancing at the little marshmallow silently.
In recent years, A had carried out countless black-ops missions. Because his individual combat abilities were far too exceptional, high-ranking officials from multiple global factions regarded him as a terrifying threat. He was permanently listed at the very top of the assassination bounties for several major international crime syndicates and foreign militaries.
Outside the game world, countless people dreamed of killing A, yet their limited abilities kept them from ever finding a single opening to strike.
A had absolutely no idea what madness had possessed him to willingly offer his head to Su Qiong.
…Only to be mercilessly rejected.
“Why?” A stared fixedly at the NPC, his dark eyes heavy.
Su Qiong flicked a white bandage dismissively. “I have absolutely zero offensive abilities. Your health bar is way too long. Killing you would definitely take a lot of effort.”
The time and energy Su Qiong would waste trying to kill A even once would be enough to farm Those Who Obey Me Win for experience dozens of times!
(Meanwhile, outside the game, Those Who Obey Me Win sneezed violently. Have you no manners?!)
Fine.
For the first time in A’s life, someone disliked him because he was too powerful.
The world’s strongest living weapon remained silent for a long time, seemingly dealt a severe blow to his ego.
Inside the hospital room, the loud hissing of evaporating water continued. Pale white steam drifted out the doorway. From a distance, the swirling clouds made the room look like an earthly paradise. Up close, the smoking room felt like a private sauna.
The colossal slime monster writhed and rolled within the blazing flames, unintentionally ensuring that every side of its gelatinous body was evenly heated. In only a few minutes, the sticky, semi-liquid sludge that had filled the entire room slowly contracted inward, drying out completely.
Only when the hissing stopped, the flames died out, and the room fell dead silent did Su Qiong cautiously float forward. Clinging to the charred remains of the doorframe, he poked his head inside to survey the damage.
The entire room had been burned pitch-black. The tables, chairs, and stools had been reduced to ash, and large patches of the wall’s plaster had peeled away. Only the metal hospital bed in the corner remained intact.
A dry, blackish-gray membrane covered the mattress. Su Qiong concluded that it was the dehydrated husk of the slime.
Lying perfectly still at the center of the dried membrane was the instance boss.
Su Qiong cautiously extended a bandaged finger and lightly poked the boss’s arm.
No reaction.
Mr. S had successfully escaped the slime monster’s suffocating grip, but his body was far too weak to wake up immediately.
Supporting himself against the hallway wall, A slowly stood up, preparing to enter the room.
“A, bring those water cups inside with us,” Su Qiong reminded him quickly. “The slime is an objectively existing physical object in the environment. It’s only dehydrated right now, not dead. If Mr. S wakes up and tries to drag us into a mutual-destruction trap, we’ll pour the water on the husk to revive the monster and distract him.”
Knowing full well that he couldn’t defeat the instance boss in a fight, Su Qiong was already preparing a sneaky contingency plan.
“Alright,” A grabbed the pile of thermoses and carried them inside. He looked closely at Su Qiong. “Are you really just a Level 1 NPC?”
“That’s right. I started at Level 0. After guiding the players through my first instance, I leveled up a little bit.”
Meaning Su Qiong’s current level was already the result of an upgrade.
A’s sharp instincts told him that Su Qiong’s situation was highly illogical. IF was a relatively fair game. That “fairness” was woven into every aspect of the system. The game always selected players with exceptional real-world abilities, granting them special privileges while simultaneously jacking up the difficulty of their assigned levels to match. For example, A had been thrown into a hell-level death trap, yet his points had skyrocketed wildly.
When evaluating players, the system weighed numerous factors—physical strength, raw intelligence, reaction speed—before assigning a level. It likely used the exact same metrics for its self-aware NPCs.
A put himself in the system’s shoes and evaluated the marshmallow.
Although Su Qiong’s physical strength was literally zero, his reaction speed and ability to execute complex plans were undeniably elite. Furthermore, Su Qiong was terrifyingly intelligent.
The system had given the marshmallow zero attack skills, zero items, and assigned him an incredibly weak, inconvenient body. Any ordinary player would have died eight hundred times on day one.
Yet, Su Qiong had survived completely unharmed. He had even weaponized the system’s restrictions into his own advantages. He used his flexible bandages brilliantly and pushed the cheap Mimicry Cloak’s illusion effects to their absolute limit. He had even managed to set a massive water monster on fire without possessing a lighter or a single piece of flammable material.
A had a gut feeling that if Su Qiong wasn’t hard-coded as a friendly white-name guide, he would be far deadlier than any of the actual bosses in the beginner zone. If the system gave Su Qiong just one offensive ability, God only knew how many players he would massacre.
Which raised the ultimate question: Why had the system forced so many heavy restrictions on Su Qiong?
Did Su Qiong possess some kind of dormant, game-breaking ability that the system was desperately trying to suppress?
“A.”
Su Qiong’s soft, sweet voice snapped A out of his thoughts.
“Mm?” A responded breathily.
Su Qiong pointed a squishy finger at the hospital bed. “Mr. S still hasn’t woken up. Are we just supposed to wait here?”
A raised his wrist and swiped his fingers across his bracelet, opening his player interface. He aimed the scanner at the hospital bed.
[NPC—Red Name] Mr. S
[Level] 30
[Abilities] ????
Unable to display. Target’s vital signs are too weak.
“He’s in terrible condition. He won’t be waking up anytime soon.”
After speaking, A lowered his arm heavily. He leaned back against the charred wall and tightly closed his eyes.
Using the elite scanner consumed physical stamina. Under normal circumstances, such a minor drain wouldn’t affect A at all. But A had just been severely corroded by the toxic slime monster. His entire body was screaming in agony, and his stamina gauge was dangerously close to zero.
His vision began to blur at the edges. A long-forgotten, overwhelming exhaustion swept over him, and his consciousness grew hazy.
“What do we do? The level has a strict time limit! We can’t just sit here and wait for him to wake up,” Su Qiong fretted, his mind racing.
When A failed to respond, Su Qiong came up with a highly risky idea on his own.
[System: Warning! Warning!]
[System: NPC Su Qiong is about to commit a major violation! Stop immediately!]
[System: Stop immediately!!!]
Somehow, Su Qiong could practically hear three furious exclamation marks echoing within the system’s cold mechanical voice.
Any normal player or NPC would have obediently frozen in terror and abandoned the dangerous idea. Unfortunately, the system had encountered Su Qiong.
This wasn’t the first time the rebellious piece of code had received a major violation warning. He paid absolutely zero attention to it. If the system is so capable, it can go find a programmer to rewrite my code!
Ignoring the blaring alarms, Su Qiong floated directly to the bedside. He extended two bandaged fingers and pressed them gently against either side of Mr. S’s pale forehead. Emptying his mind, he concentrated all his digital attention on a single point.
[System: Command received. Mental-interference punishment will immediately be administered to NPC Su Qiong.]
[System: Punishment failed. Requesting another interference attempt.] [System: Requesting another interference attempt.]
[System: Requesting renewed severe interference!]
Within ten seconds, the furious system attempted to strike Su Qiong’s mind four separate times. The main server authorized its ultimate, maximum-level interference command. The sub-system was just about to execute the strike when it suddenly realized—
Within the system’s detectable range, Su Qiong’s core consciousness had vanished into thin air.
He was completely gone!
Only a pile of pure-white bandages remained in a heap beside the bed. Without their core consciousness supporting them, the bandages lay limply scattered across the floor, totally lifeless.
“Wow!”
When Su Qiong regained awareness, he found himself standing in an unfamiliar, endless white space.
“I was only trying it casually. I can’t believe it actually worked!”
He was inside the mental world of Mr. S.
Su Qiong’s roaming digital consciousness had successfully hacked into Mr. S’s body.
For the past several days, Su Qiong had existed merely as a disembodied consciousness wrapped in loose bandages. He had no true physical body. At first, he assumed the system had just been lazy and neglected to model a body for him.
But after opening the shop and discovering he could purchase a human body for five million KPI, a bold idea had occurred to him: If I can buy a body to inhabit, that means my code possesses the innate ability to hack into and control human vessels.
However, every human body Su Qiong had encountered so far was controlled by an active, independent consciousness. How could the weak, wandering code of a Level 1 NPC possibly overpower a native mind and hijack their body?
But Mr. S was different. He had been unconscious and near death for far too long. His native consciousness was incredibly weak, leaving his mind practically an empty shell. As he lay on the bed, it was as if he were deliberately leaving the door wide open, inviting Su Qiong to invade.
When Su Qiong’s consciousness slipped inside, he felt absolutely zero rejection.
Surveying his surroundings, he realized he was standing inside a hospital consultation room. Judging by the view outside the window, this mental world was unquestionably the exact same hospital as the game instance.
The only difference was the season. While the real instance took place in the sweltering midsummer heat, chilly autumn winds were blowing outside the window in this memory. The willow trees lining the street were several sizes smaller. Based on their growth rate, this memory had to take place at least four or five years before the current timeline.
Sitting directly across from him was an older man in a white coat. The name tag on his chest read: Chief Physician.
Su Qiong felt his perspective involuntarily shift downward. He saw a pair of small, trembling boy’s hands resting on two knees drawn tightly together. The boy’s entire posture radiated painful, suffocating discomfort.
“Could this be Mr. S’s childhood memory?” Su Qiong murmured softly.
Across the desk, the Chief Physician casually flipped through a medical chart. Without looking up, he asked perfunctorily, “Tell me. Why do you believe you are ill?”
Su Qiong couldn’t control the mouth to speak. Instead, a timid, trembling boy’s voice sounded right beside his ears.
“I’m broken.”
Even though Su Qiong was inside the boy’s body and could vividly feel the child hovering on the edge of a total emotional breakdown, he couldn’t speak to comfort him. He was trapped as a passive observer.
Unable to do anything, Su Qiong listened helplessly as the boy dissected his own soul with agonizing cruelty. Whenever the boy spoke, the corresponding memory flashed violently before Su Qiong’s eyes.
“Because I’m broken, I’ve deliberately done things that make people hate me ever since I was young.”
The boy was a verified genius. From the moment he formed his first memories, he was intensely fascinated by astronomy, physics, and chemistry. At five years old, he had built a homemade telescope from scraps to observe the night sky.
But his parents were uneducated and didn’t understand his brilliance. They only saw a weird kid. They constantly screamed at him.
“Throw that junk away! How did I give birth to such an abnormal freak?!”
“Because I’m broken, no one wants to be my friend.”
“My teacher put my desk in the very back row, right next to the trash can. My seat always smelled bad.”
When the boy started school, he didn’t laugh, run around, or act spoiled like normal kids. His teachers and classmates couldn’t understand the profound, complex things he wanted to talk about, so they quickly labeled him “creepy” and “unlikable.”
“It was always my fault whenever Mom and Dad fought.”
“I thought that as long as I took all the beatings silently, Mom wouldn’t hate Dad so much.”
“But Mom still left.”
“Dad said I drove her away. He said he was going to strangle me to death.”
As Su Qiong listened, he desperately wanted to rip control of the body away, grab the boy, and scream: It wasn’t your fault!
But he couldn’t make a sound. He could only listen helplessly through the boy’s ears.
“My classmates bullied me because it was my fault.”
“My teacher said it happened because I was too antisocial and weird.”
“I decided I had to change. I had to become a good, normal kid so they would finally like me.”
“But they just pushed me down the stairs. They shoved my head into the urinal. They hurt me, again and again.” “Every time, every single time—I apologized! I told them it was my fault!”
“But they still hated me.”
Why the hell did you have to apologize?! Su Qiong cursed silently in a blind rage. Everything that happened was the fault of those useless, filthy pieces of human garbage who could only feel better about their own miserable lives by torturing someone weaker!
Tragically, when those events were actually happening, not a single person had ever said those words to the boy.
That was why the broken boy had finally come to the hospital. He sat quietly in front of the doctor, laying his bleeding soul bare.
“They liked making people suffer. So, I finally treated them the way they liked.”
“Dad died. My classmates died. My teacher died.” “Even the stray dog outside that always tried to bite me died.”
“The police arrested me. They locked me in a cell and told me to reflect on my horrible crimes.” “But the judge at the trial said I wasn’t guilty.” “He said I was just ill.”
The boy finally raised his head, gazing at the Chief Physician with pure, desperate devotion.
“Doctor… you’ll cure me, won’t you?”
Looking through the boy’s eyes, Su Qiong finally saw the enormous, bold words painted across the white wall behind the doctor’s desk.
At that exact second, a furious system notification violently smashed its way into Mr. S’s mental world.
[System: Command received. Mental interference will immediately be executed on the instance NPC!]
“Ahhh—!”
Completely unprepared, Su Qiong felt the raw, unfiltered agony rip through the human body he was occupying. It felt like ten thousand red-hot needles were being violently driven straight into his brain, far beyond the pain threshold any human could possibly endure.
Showing absolutely zero mercy, the system’s shockwave forcibly expelled Su Qiong’s code from Mr. S’s mind.
“That hurt so much!”
Even after his consciousness slammed back into his pile of bandages, Su Qiong was trembling with lingering terror.
Help! Human pain is terrifying!
Recalling the unbearable sensation of needles stirring his brain like soup, Su Qiong suddenly realized that his cheap, careless character model had massive advantages. Even if a player handed him five million KPI right now, Su Qiong never wanted to buy a human body again! Being a piece of code was so much easier. Code couldn’t feel pain.
“Su Qiong?”
Hearing the marshmallow’s cry, A fought his way out of his semi-conscious haze and forced his heavy eyes open. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Su Qiong quickly wrapped his bandages back around his puffy form, his voice trembling slightly. Nothing much. The bastard system just tortured me.
Remembering the final image he had seen before being violently kicked out, Su Qiong floated over, tightly grabbed A’s arm, and said excitedly, “A! I know the hospital’s full name!”
“What is it called?”
“Resthaven Psychiatric Hospital! I saw it painted on the wall in Mr. S’s memories!” After going through absolute hell to find the first clue, Su Qiong excitedly squeezed A’s hand.
“Resthaven… Ngh.” A let out a sharp, muffled grunt of pain.
Su Qiong’s bandages had zero tangible weight and normally only produced the faintest sensation of a soft touch. Logically, grabbing A’s arm shouldn’t have hurt at all.
But A’s current condition was critical. The horrific acid from the slime had burned away the top layers of his skin, leaving raw, exposed nerve endings that couldn’t tolerate even the slightest pressure.
A frowned almost imperceptibly, forcefully swallowing the pain, and asked as if nothing were wrong, “Did you discover anything else?”
“There was more… Wait. What happened to your injuries?!” Only after hearing the grunt did Su Qiong look closely and realize that A’s massive chemical burns showed absolutely zero signs of healing.
Inside the game world, players’ bodies were digitally enhanced. Their vitality and healing factors vastly exceeded what they had in the real world. Furthermore, as their levels increased, their passive regeneration speed skyrocketed.
A was currently Level 24. While he couldn’t compare to the Level 100 gods who could literally reattach their own severed heads, basic superficial injuries that didn’t shatter bone should have mostly healed within twenty minutes.
At least half an hour had passed since Su Qiong first hacked into Mr. S’s mind. Not only had A’s burns failed to heal, but the necrotic blue-black rot actually seemed to be spreading.
A had already noticed. “The slime monster was strong enough to restrain the instance boss,” he said calmly. “Its acid must inflict ‘advanced damage’ on players.”
Advanced damage was entirely different from normal cuts and bruises. Under the system’s rules, it could not heal naturally over time. It required specific, high-tier medical treatment to cure.
Unfortunately, the hospital strictly forbade players from using their abilities or opening the shop during the day. A couldn’t even buy a basic healing potion to save his own life.
“Medicine!” Su Qiong gasped. “A psychiatric hospital is still a hospital! They must have medication for treating chemical burns!”
A looked at him coolly. “You mean the purple bottle?”
“…”
Remembering the disgusting purple liquid that had soaked false teeth before being injected into him, Su Qiong immediately gagged.
“Sorry. That was a joke,” A sighed. “Most of Resthaven’s actual medication was secretly swapped out for fake glucose and yeast tablets to sell on the black market. As for medicine that actually works… I know the Director keeps a fully stocked household first-aid kit hidden in his private office. He refuses to use the hospital’s contaminated drugs.”
“Where is the Director’s office?!”
“Second floor. The Director hates being disturbed. Aside from scheduled torture sessions in the punishment rooms, no one is ever allowed on the second floor during the day.”
Su Qiong made his decision instantly. “Alright. We’re going to the Director’s office to fix your injuries.”
A stared at the little marshmallow for a long moment before saying with deep sincerity, “Thank you. I owe you my life again.”
“It’s fine! Guiding you is my job!”
“You could easily choose not to do it.”
“Oh, right!” Su Qiong suddenly realized. The system’s physical punishments didn’t actually work on him. Even if he went totally rogue and refused to help, there was literally nothing the system could do about it. So why was he risking his code to guide players?
“Forget it! Who cares?” Su Qiong pushed the existential question aside. “I think your instance is super interesting, so I want to guide you through it!”
A hesitated, a rare, genuine softness entering his voice. “…Thank you.”
Although Su Qiong found the intense gratitude a little weird, he happily accepted it.
They sneaked out of the room, creeping down the stairs to the second-floor corridor until they reached the Director’s office near the elevator banks.
A pulled a copied key from his pocket—which he had obviously prepared days in advance—and unlocked the heavy door with practiced ease, strolling inside as casually as if he were entering his own living room.
Su Qiong: “…” Do you truly not understand why every major faction on Earth wants to assassinate you?
The Director’s office looked completely ordinary. It was just a boring workplace containing a heavy mahogany desk, bookshelves, a water cooler, and an outdated desktop computer.
Su Qiong stared eagerly at the computer, wondering if he could use it to log directly into IN OFF’s main servers. He could hack the backend and permanently write the keyword “six-pack abdominal muscles” into his original character code!
[System: Warning! Warning!]
[System: White-name NPC Su Qiong has been detected…]
The system blared Su Qiong’s name, then abruptly cut off.
Two seconds later, the alarm fell dead silent, instantly becoming as quiet as a terrified chicken. In that heavy silence, Su Qiong could practically feel the system’s suffocating, wordless resentment.
Why are you constantly violating the rules?!
“Forget it.” For once, Su Qiong actually obeyed the warning and abandoned his master plan. It wasn’t because the previous mental strike had scared him. The real reason was that Su Qiong… didn’t actually know how to code.
Even if he successfully hacked the main server, he only had general internet knowledge. He didn’t know how to read or alter advanced backend game logic.
This just proved how incredibly vital human programmers were to pieces of code! He wondered if any of the players currently trapped in IF were the elite software engineers he dreamed of meeting.
Since A had already broken into the office days ago, he knew exactly where everything was. He pulled the pristine first-aid kit from the bottom shelf of a bookcase and quickly began treating his own burns. He absolutely refused to let Su Qiong help, terrified the clumsy little NPC might accidentally tangle himself up in the medical gauze.
Because this was Su Qiong’s first time unlocking the Director’s office, he floated around curiously, touching things here and there. By casually poking files, he accidentally triggered several new system hints regarding the hospital’s illegal operations.
A had already dismantled the hospital’s criminal network before Su Qiong even arrived. The IF system monitored the entire game in real-time, so it obviously knew A had already solved this. Yet, the system was still deliberately force-feeding these hints to Su Qiong. That proved the hospital’s backstory was absolutely critical to solving the main quest.
The hints were incredibly detailed. One of the documents was a clipped newspaper article titled: [Shocking Scandal at Resthaven Psychiatric Hospital]
Su Qiong carefully read through the files. It felt like he had suddenly gained an omniscient bird’s-eye view of the world, allowing him to understand the horrific truth through the reporter’s investigation.
Resthaven Psychiatric Hospital was small and located in the middle of nowhere, yet it had always been a prestigious, government-designated institution for official psychiatric evaluations.
According to the leaked report, many corrupt politicians, wealthy elites, and spoiled rich kids who committed horrific crimes but refused to serve prison time only needed to pay a massive bribe to “smooth out the necessary relationships.” The courts would then order them sent to Resthaven for a mandatory psychiatric evaluation.
Regardless of their actual, perfectly sane mental condition, the corrupt doctors would officially diagnose the criminals with one of the three major psychiatric disorders that legally exempted them from criminal responsibility.
The criminals would then casually be admitted into the hospital’s luxury VIP wards for “treatment,” entirely dodging prison.
“This instance is so strange,” Su Qiong muttered to himself. “Supernatural slime monsters, melting ghost patients, magical cursed water… yet the core background story is completely realistic. Can something with this much magic really be classified as a ‘realistic’ instance?”
“It can,” A replied coldly, bandaging his arm.
“Huh?”
“If what humans call ‘reality’ means that wealthy criminals face zero consequences, public courts shield murderers for bribes, and doctors place profits above human lives…” A tied the knot tight. “Then I would say the world inside this hospital is far more realistic than the real world.”
“Chaotic, filthy, and overflowing with undisguised, rotten human nature. How very real.” A looked down at his bloody hands. “That’s why I… hate humans.”
He stopped himself halfway through the sentence, shaking his head. “You probably can’t understand what I’m saying.”
“Mm, but I want to understand,” Su Qiong replied earnestly. “The humans I’ve met here are very interesting. I like humans.”
A didn’t say anything else.
Su Qiong floated back to the files, carefully reading the remaining clues detailing the massive black-market drug ring and human organ trafficking occurring in the basement.
Resthaven’s criminal empire had operated flawlessly for more than a decade without ever being exposed. It had only grown more sophisticated and deadly. This was because the upper-class elites who were buying their way out of prison desperately needed Resthaven to stay open.
Because the VIP criminals weren’t actually mentally ill, they obviously didn’t care that the expensive psychiatric meds were being stolen and sold. In fact, taking the fake glucose placebos was much safer for their bodies.
As for the actual mentally ill patients trapped in the normal wards, the doctors actively wanted their conditions to worsen until they went completely, irreparably insane. Madmen were much easier to control, lock up, and use as convenient sources for black-market organ harvesting. And if a patient somehow escaped or tried to expose the truth? Who was going to believe the frantic ramblings of a diagnosed lunatic?
“They’re too malicious,” Su Qiong shook his head, unable to compute the logic. “If these doctors were smart enough to build such a meticulous, brilliant criminal empire, why didn’t they use those brains to actually cure their patients?”
“Because the doctors were greedy and wanted more money,” A explained simply.
Su Qiong still didn’t get it. “Strange. Didn’t they originally become doctors to cure illnesses and save lives?”
Medical school was extraordinarily difficult and grueling, yet they had endured years of it. But the second they put on their white coats, they completely abandoned the ideals they had started with.
Su Qiong only knew that after choosing his alignment as a white-name NPC, he had diligently and happily guided players through their levels. Even a simple piece of code accepted total responsibility for its choices. Could humans, who were supposed to be the smartest creatures on Earth, truly fail to understand such a basic principle?
“If everyone remained faithful to their original ideals, then an ‘unchanged heart’ wouldn’t be considered something precious…” A gasped sharply. “Hiss.”
As A spoke, a sudden, blinding agony exploded from the surface of his skin, driving deep into his muscles, bones, and internal organs. The pain instantly shattered the limits of his legendary endurance.
“What’s wrong?!” Su Qiong rushed to A’s side.
He looked at A’s arm. The external acid burns had just been cleaned, coated in medical ointment, and securely bandaged. Yet, they showed absolutely zero signs of healing.
Su Qiong gently lifted A’s arm. Peeking beneath the edge of the gauze, he gasped. Even beneath the completely uninjured, healthy layers of skin, A’s blood vessels had turned a rotting blue-black.
He hurriedly pulled open A’s hospital gown. The blue-black, poisoned veins had connected into a massive, terrifying web that looked exactly like a spider’s nest. The toxic web was rapidly spreading inward from A’s fingertips and toes, racing toward the center of his chest.
And the final destination where the web would converge was A’s heart!
“A! Your body—!” Su Qiong panicked.
[System: Player A has suffered extreme radiation damage within the realistic instance: Resthaven Psychiatric Hospital. Conventional medical methods cannot heal this injury.]
[Hint: Radiation damage sustained within the instance will only disappear after the player successfully clears the level and leaves.]
“Radiation damage?! He’s been trapped inside a hospital this entire time! Why would he suffer radiation exposure?!” Su Qiong demanded. As the guide NPC, the system was legally required to warn him before a lethal crisis occurred!
“The slime,” A gritted his teeth, gripping his chest as he fought for breath. “The slime monster in the room… the chemicals used to create it must have contained highly radioactive medical waste.”
Because the slime and the instance boss presented a much more immediate, violent threat than invisible radiation poisoning—which wouldn’t kill the player instantly—the system had exploited a loophole and neglected to issue a specific warning.
“…” Su Qiong didn’t have time to scream at the system. He rapidly scanned his internal database for files on radiation injuries.
He wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t checked. But once he read the files, his digital heart plummeted.
Radiation damage was fundamentally different from normal combat injuries that caused bleeding or broken bones. Radiation attacked the cells themselves, causing catastrophic, irreversible harm to the skin, blood-production organs, and the brain. Furthermore, human medicine in the real world had absolutely no cure for severe radiation poisoning.
A person exposed to lethal radiation might look perfectly fine on the outside for a while. Yet, the irreversible countdown to their horrific death had already begun.
The damned IF system always insisted on brutal realism in the absolute worst places! A’s fatal injuries could only be cured by the system’s magic after he successfully escaped the hospital. And the bastard system had clearly manipulated the simulation to violently accelerate the radiation’s spread.
Once the blue-black spiderweb racing across A’s body connected over his heart, he would die.
[System: Player A has two hours of remaining survival time. Countdown begins now.]
Ding—
A glowing string of translucent red numbers materialized in the air above A’s head.
In the blink of an eye, the numbers ticked down.
Su Qiong and A stared at the clock, understanding the grim reality simultaneously.
It was a literal countdown to death.
“We truly have no time left! We’re still missing two major clues! What do we do?! What do we do?!” Su Qiong panicked, floating in frantic circles.
A calmly pulled the exam paper from his pocket and grabbed a pen. “I’ll just write down a random answer and bet everything on luck.”
“Stop!” Su Qiong threw his squishy body over the paper to block the pen. “We’ve worked so hard and we already solved the first clue! What happens if you guess wrong and fail?!”
A was totally unconcerned. “What if I succeed?”
“Then tell me right now: exactly how many people are in this instance?”
“Infinite?” A guessed, sounding entirely unsure.
Su Qiong groaned. “Fine! Then what is the two-word theme of the instance?!”
“Drinking water.”
“Drinking water?! Do you honestly think a psycho-horror death game would choose something as boring as ‘drinking water’ for its grand theme?!” Su Qiong laughed angrily.
A blinked. He strongly suspected his radiation poisoning had gotten so severe that he was hallucinating. Otherwise, why could he clearly see blatant, sassy disdain on a featureless marshmallow’s face?
“The second clue is the Critical Care Ward. It must exist somewhere inside this hospital, even though the directory says it doesn’t… There has to be a trick to finding it.”
Su Qiong frantically sorted through every single detail he had seen since entering the game, combining it with everything A had told him, desperately searching for the key to breaking the deadlock.
A watched the hyper-focused marshmallow and forced his failing brain to join the analysis.
“I am absolutely certain I’ve searched every square inch of this hospital multiple times. I never saw a Critical Care Ward. At the very least, I never saw a room with that nameplate on the door.”
“Which means it might not actually be called the Critical Care Ward,” Su Qiong deduced.
A nodded. “Correct. Combined with the map showing that its location constantly shifts between floors, I suspect it isn’t a physical, specific room at all. Instead, fulfilling certain specific conditions might trigger a normal room to become the Critical Care Ward.”
The exact second A proposed the hypothesis, the tattered old map slipped from his pocket, floating gently to the floor. As if possessing a life of its own, it slowly unfolded before them.
A line of fresh, bloody text materialized across the paper.
[The patient’s vitality is critically weak. Please escort the patient into the Critical Care Ward immediately.]
The Critical Care Ward!
“I understand!” Su Qiong gasped, the puzzle pieces clicking into place. “Triggering the Critical Care Ward requires two strict conditions: the logic you just explained, and the physical presence of a critically ill, dying patient!”
The critically ill patient, currently clinging to his last breath, forced a faint, arrogant smirk. “I told you. Sometimes you just have to gamble on luck.”
Su Qiong grabbed the old map with his left hand and tried to pull A upright with his right, but his squishy marshmallow arm couldn’t generate enough torque to lift the heavy man. He was far too physically weak.
Having a human body really would be so much more convenient after all, he grumbled internally.
A hadn’t expected the little marshmallow to actually be able to lift him anyway. Leaning heavily against the wall, A gritted his teeth against the searing radiation pain and slowly dragged himself to his feet.
“You just wasted another five minutes of your life. Let’s hurry up and find the ward,” Su Qiong urged. He floated over to the office door and wrapped his bandaged hand around the brass handle to open it.
But the handle felt violently sticky and wet.
Startled, Su Qiong immediately snatched his hand back!
He looked down and froze. A familiar, disgusting, semi-liquid blue sludge was slowly squeezing its way through the keyhole.
Drip— Drip—
Accompanied by the sickening sound of pattering wet sludge, more and more toxic fluid splattered onto the floor.
Su Qiong instinctively retreated two steps, watching in horror as the viscous liquid merged together on the tiles, perfectly forming the shape of a human hand.
A glanced up at the wall clock and said calmly, “It’s dark.”
After 8:00 PM every night, the system lifted the daytime restrictions on players. But it also lifted the restrictions on the mimicry NPCs.
A massive, continuous stream of new patients had arrived at the hospital today, far more than the previous days combined. Throughout the afternoon, they had desperately chugged from their massive water thermoses, refusing to stop even when their stomachs visibly swelled to the bursting point.
Because Su Qiong had only entered the game at dawn, he had only seen one fully liquefied patient on the elevator. Therefore, he didn’t know the hospital’s most terrifying rule:
The more water the mutated humans drank during the day, the more completely they liquefied into monsters at night.
For example, the horrifying sludge currently breaking into the room…
The severed blue hand bounced twice on the floor. Using its dripping fingers like legs, it scuttled up the wood and cheerfully reached the handle. It gripped the brass and slowly twisted.
Click.
The lock popped open, and the heavy door was pushed ajar.
A sticky, melting face flowed through the narrow crack, spreading itself like mold across the wall. A single, massive fried-egg-shaped eye containing two cloudy, erratic pupils stared fixedly at the little marshmallow.
Su Qiong was a piece of code firmly committed to logic and materialism. He wasn’t afraid of ghosts or spirits. Yet, the grotesque liquid monster oozing through the door nearly frightened the code right out of him.
Heart pounding, Su Qiong took a closer look at the melting face. He suddenly felt that “it” seemed very familiar, as if he had just encountered it a few hours ago.
The liquid monster scrutinized Su Qiong for a long time. Finally, it wriggled its melting mouth into a recognizable shape and released a sinister, gurgling laugh.
“It’s you.”
“!!!”
The monster recognized him!
“You already died on my table in Treatment Room No. 2 this afternoon,” the melted doctor gurgled, oozing fully into the room. “Why are you still alive?”
