【Ding!】
【S-rank surgery "Redundant Brain Tissue Resection" completed!】
【Surgical Evaluation: A+ (Crude, but highly effective).】
【Congratulations! You have earned: 500 points.】
【Congratulations! You have obtained a special material: Rampage Wolf King's Soul (Can be used for forging).】
Victor watched the string of zeros on the system panel, his breathing growing rapid.
Five hundred points!
Combined with his previous balance, his account total instantly broke the seven-hundred-point mark!
He had struck it rich overnight!
"I'm loaded..."
Victor rubbed his hands together, his face blooming with the ecstatic joy of a lottery winner hitting the jackpot.
With this massive sum of money, he could finally move past this 'back-alley workshop' style of operation and give his clinic a complete, high-end overhaul.
"System! Open the building upgrade interface!"
Victor waved his hand grandly, exuding the aura of a general surveying his domain.
The light screen before him shifted, revealing a simple floor plan of the clinic.
【Current Clinic Level: LV1 (Barely usable wooden cabin)】
【Available Upgrade Options:】
Clinic Main Expansion: Upgrade the wooden structure to stone masonry; increase the number of floors and rooms. (Cost: 300 points)
Security System Upgrade: Construct defensive walls and install basic magic traps. (Cost: 200 points)
Medical Facility Upgrade: Unlock new modules such as 【Sterile Operating Room】, 【Basic Ward】, and 【Constant Temperature Morgue】. (Cost: 400 points)
"Only children make choices."
Victor looked at the options and didn't hesitate for a second.
"I want them all!"
Although he was just a few points short of buying everything at once, that didn't matter.
"System, recycle that black wolf head and the leopard corpse."
【Recycling successful!】
【Obtained: Biomass Materials x300, S-rank Magic Core (Damaged) x1...】
【Account Balance: 850 points.】
"Perfect."
Victor took a deep breath, like a general about to press the launch button for a nuclear strike, and tapped heavily on the glowing golden 【One-click All-upgrade】 button.
"Upgrade for me!"
Boom—!!!
At Victor's command...
The entire clinic, along with the ground for a hundred meters around it, began to tremble violently.
"What's happening? An earthquake?!"
Elizabeth, who was tallying accounts behind the counter, jumped in fright, spilling gold coins all over the floor.
Mia, who was gnawing on a leopard leg in the corner, also looked up alertly, letting out a low whimper from her throat.
Only Alice seemed long accustomed to such 'miracles,' looking out the window with curious eyes.
Before their shocked gazes...
The original three-story small building, cobbled together from scrap wood, seemed to come alive, beginning to decompose and restructure itself.
Rotting wooden planks dissolved into points of light and vanished.
In their place, heavy blocks of blue-granite with a dark, metallic luster rose from the ground, stacking themselves rapidly in a way that defied all laws of architecture.
The originally crude wooden fence was replaced by a five-meter-high black iron grate topped with sharp barbs.
The ground cracked open as a road paved with white bones extended from the main gate all the way to the edge of the forest.
In less than five minutes...
When the vibrations finally ceased...
The wooden shack that once looked like a rural veterinarian's office was gone.
In its place stood a three-story gothic castle, covering thousands of square meters, radiating a grim and somber aura...
A dark castle.
The castle was built entirely of unknown black stone, its walls covered in withered rose vines. Narrow, pointed windows peered out like eyes watching the night.
At the highest point of the roof, a massive red cross emblem made of bleached bones emitted an eerie glow under the pale moonlight.
At the main entrance, two magical lanterns crafted from skulls burned with ghostly green flames, casting a flickering light over the sign that read 【Benevolent Heart Clinic】.
"Now this looks the part."
Standing on the castle balcony, Victor looked at his new home with satisfaction, feeling like he had finally maxed out his main base in a simulation game.
He turned and walked inside.
The interior changes were even more dramatic.
The first floor was no longer a cramped, crowded hall, but had become a spacious, bright... waiting room?
Though several anatomical diagrams hung on the walls and glass jars containing unidentified organs sat in the corners, there were at least several rows of benches for 'patients' to rest on.
"Director, what is this place?"
Alice curiously pushed open a door labeled 【Sterile Operating Room】.
Inside was no longer an empty room, but a full suite of modern surgical equipment shimmering with a silver metallic sheen.
There was an automated adjustable operating table, high-precision vital signs monitors, and a glass cabinet filled with various models of scalpels and hemostats.
"This is where we earn our living."
Victor walked in, patrolling his territory.
He then pushed open another door.
【Inpatient Department】.
Elizabeth poked her head in to look, and her expression became somewhat strange.
Was this an inpatient department?
This was clearly a row of individual cells equipped with iron bars and chains!
"Ahem."
Victor coughed lightly and explained with a straight face:
"These are protective measures designed to prevent certain patients with unstable post-operative emotions from wandering off."
"Look, the bedding is very soft."
He pointed to the pile of moldy-smelling straw inside the cells.
"And finally, this place."
Victor pushed open the heavy iron door to the basement.
A wave of icy air rushed out to meet them.
【Constant Temperature Morgue】.
Inside, the space was vast, with rows of cold metal morgue cabinets neatly arranged, exuding the aura of death.
"Excellent!"
Victor looked at the empty cabinets and offered heartfelt praise.
"Finally, a place to store fresh experimental materials!"
"In the future, if a patient is unfortunately 'unresponsive to resuscitation,' we won't have to worry about the corpse rotting."
Elizabeth: "..."
Alice: "Wow!"
Mia: "(Sniff, sniff... doesn't seem edible)."
While Victor was immersed in the joy of his 'new house,' he was unaware...
This massive 'demolition and reconstruction' had already alerted the other 'residents' of this land.
...
The Black Swamp was located thirty miles west of the Blackthorn Forest.
This was the territory of the lizardmen.
It was damp and sweltering, the air perpetually filled with a nauseating, fishy stench.
Currently, inside a crude temple built of mud and boulders in the center of the swamp...
The lizardman lord, "Slippery Skin" Saak, was irritably lashing the ground with his thick tail.
Thud! Thud!
"Roar—! (So noisy!)"
Saak was a mutant lizardman over three meters tall, covered in hard, dark-green scales with a row of menacing bone spikes running down his back.
He had just enjoyed a sumptuous dinner (two goblins who had taken a wrong turn) and was preparing for a second nap.
However, a violent earthquake had suddenly emanated from the east.
Though it only lasted a few minutes, that terrifying tremor—as if the earth itself were groaning—still made his heart skip a beat.
"Chief! Chief!"
A small lizardman scout came running in, crawling and stumbling, his face full of terror.
"The east... something big happened in the east!"
"Roar? (What could be so big? Is that twin-headed wolf acting crazy again?)"
Saak roared impatiently.
He and the Twin-Headed Demon Wolf were old neighbors; they stayed out of each other's way but couldn't stand the sight of one another.
"No... it's not the wolf!"
The scout's voice was distorted by fear.
He pointed toward the east and stammered:
"It's that direction... that edge of the forest that's cursed, where only the undead and madmen dare to go..."
"Just now, light suddenly came from there! A huge, huge light!"
"And then... then the mountain there... it seems to have... grown taller?!"
"Roar?! (What nonsense are you talking?! How can a mountain grow taller?)"
Saak sent the scout tumbling with a whip of his tail. He figured the fellow had breathed in too much swamp gas and lost his mind.
"It's true! Chief!"
The scout clutched his head, crying out in defense.
"I didn't see it wrong! There used to be only a tiny ruin there, but now... now there seems to be a black spire!"
"A spire?"
Saak's murky reptilian vertical pupils snapped shut.
That place...
He had some memory of it.
Supposedly, decades ago, a group of cultists exiled by the human empire had established an altar there, but later, for some unknown reason, they all died overnight, leaving only a cursed ruin.
Could it be...
That the souls of those cultists had returned?
"Roar... (Interesting.)"
Saak licked his lips with his forked tongue, a flash of greed in his eyes.
Anyone who could re-establish a stronghold in such a hellhole was certainly no weakling.
But by the same token, it meant there might be profit to be gained.
"Roar! (You! Go back and scout!)"
Saak pointed a claw at the shivering scout, issuing an undeniable command.
"Find out for me! Whether the one living in that spire... is a man or a ghost!"
"Also, see if there's anything... valuable."
"Roar! (Yes... yes! Chief!)"
The lizardman scout didn't dare disobey. He scrambled out of the temple and vanished into the pitch-black swamp.
He did not know...
That he was about to face an existence ten thousand times more terrifying than any cultist or undead he could imagine.
"Roar... (A new neighbor...)"
Saak narrowed his eyes, looking at the dark eastern night sky, a low growl echoing in his throat.
"I hope you are... wealthy enough."
Rate on N.U.
