"Puh—"
With a sound like vomiting, the slime girl Bobo puffed her cheeks and spat out a... person.
It was the Templar scout she had swallowed earlier, "Holy Eye."
"Bo-bo! (Not yummy!)"
Bobo wiped her mouth with her small hands in disgust, her face written with the expression of having stepped on a landmine.
"Too hard! The bones hurt my teeth!"
The spat-out Holy Eye was covered in a layer of slimy green digestive fluid. His artifact cloak, which claimed to be immune to most magic damage, was now riddled with holes from corrosion.
But he was still alive.
Only his state... was a bit off.
He curled up on the ground, trembling violently, eyes rolling back, muttering unintelligible words.
"Tentacles... so many tentacles..."
"Scissors... don't snip me..."
"Drills... ahhh drills..."
"Hehe... turned into a streetlight... so bright..."
He cried one moment and laughed the next, like a complete lunatic.
"It seems we won't get anything out of him."
Victor stepped forward, nudged the broken wretch with his foot, and shook his head.
"Sanity value cleared to zero; the cerebral cortex has suffered irreversible damage."
"He's a lost cause. Drag him away and turn him into flower fertilizer."
Victor didn't even have the interest to perform surgery on such an enemy who had delivered himself to the door.
Too weak. He didn't even qualify as experimental material.
"As you command, Director."
Alice was just about to step forward and drag him away.
Suddenly.
"Bo?"
Having just spat out the "trash," Bobo seemed to bounce back uncontrollably due to the recoil of the retching.
Her jelly-like, bouncy body, like a green cannonball, slammed directly into a plain-looking stone wall in the basement.
"Thud!"
A dull sound of impact.
There was no scene of blood and gore as one might expect.
Bobo's body possessed physical immunity; hitting the wall only resulted in a "Duang" sound as she bounced back like a rubber ball.
But that wall...
"Crack... crack-crack..."
A tooth-aching sound of fracturing echoed.
On that load-bearing wall made of obsidian, half a meter thick, spiderweb-like cracks began to spread from the point of Bobo's impact!
"Hmm?"
Victor frowned.
This castle was a product of the system; its durability was comparable to a military fortress.
Bobo had some weight, but she shouldn't have been able to crack the wall with one hit, right?
Before he could figure it out...
"Boom—!!!"
The crack-riddled wall could no longer hold and collapsed!
Shattered stones flew everywhere, and dust billowed through the air.
"Cough, cough, cough!"
"Bobo! How many times have I told you? No playing bouncy ball indoors!"
Victor scolded irritably while waving his hand to clear the dust.
However.
When the dust settled and the scene behind the wall became clear.
Victor's voice stopped abruptly.
The entire basement fell into a deathly silence.
Everyone's eyes were fixed on the large hole that had been smashed open.
Behind the wall.
It wasn't the expected soil or rock layers.
Instead, it was a...
Writhing, pulsing... glowing with a dark red light...
Flesh.
It was a "flesh wall" composed of countless blood vessels, nerves, and muscle tissues entangled together.
It looked like a giant, living tumor embedded deep within the earth.
"Glug... glug..."
The surface of the flesh wall pulsated slowly. Each pulse sounded like a giant heart beating, emitting a dull and oppressive sound that struck directly into the depths of one's soul.
Inside the vessels on the wall, which were as thick as pythons, flowed a viscous, dark-golden liquid.
The air was thick with an ancient scent that wouldn't dissipate—a mixture of blood and sulfur.
"What... what is this thing?"
For the first time, a look of "terror" appeared on Elizabeth's habitually arrogant face.
She could clearly feel the pressure radiating from that flesh wall.
It was a terrifying pressure originating from the very pinnacle of life, surpassing mortal boundaries!
Even when facing a dragon king, her heart had never skipped a beat like this!
Alice also retracted her smile, subconsciously tightening her grip on her great scissors, her red eyes full of vigilance.
Mia's fur stood on end, a threatening low growl escaping her throat as she protectively stood in front of Victor.
【Warning! Warning! Highest level energy response detected!】
【High concentration of "ancient god radiation" detected!】
【Source of radiation: Behind the wall, three thousand meters underground!】
【Preliminary judgment: An unknown... ancient god ruin exists underground!!!】
The system's alarm bells rang frantically in Victor's mind like a doomsday knell.
Every word came with blood-red exclamation marks representing extreme danger!
"Ancient god... ruin?"
Looking at the slowly writhing flesh wall, a flash of realization crossed Victor's eyes.
He finally understood.
Why the Eternal Night Peninsula was cursed.
Why the monsters here mutated.
Why the system chose to set up shop here.
It turned out...
His tiny Benevolent Heart Clinic was actually built on the grave of a fallen ancient god?!
And judging by this posture, this ancient god...
Didn't seem entirely dead?
"No wonder..."
Victor muttered to himself.
"No wonder I always felt the feng shui down here was good. It turns out it's a dragon vein... no, a divine vein."
"Director! Get back!"
Elizabeth's voice trembled slightly.
"This thing is too dangerous! It's emitting mental pollution! If we stay any longer, our souls will be eroded!"
Indeed.
Faint whispers, full of temptation and madness, began to echo in the air.
Those voices seemed to ring directly in their minds, constantly enticing them to tear their own flesh and merge with that wall to obtain so-called "immortality" and "evolution."
Even a powerhouse of Elizabeth's level felt her will beginning to waver.
However.
As the core target of the mental pollution, Victor...
Had no reaction at all.
Not only did he not feel any discomfort.
Instead, he stepped forward with great interest and poked the writhing flesh wall with his hand.
Soft.
Very elastic.
It felt like a piece of top-grade Kobe beef.
"Mental pollution?"
Victor shook his head, his face showing the disdain a doctor has for pseudo-science.
"Elizabeth, your medical knowledge is too lacking."
"This isn't called mental pollution."
He pointed at the flesh wall and corrected her solemnly:
"This is called 'auditory hallucination' caused by 'high-frequency infrasound resonance'."
"To put it simply, this wall is burping. The sound is just too loud and is affecting your brainwaves."
Elizabeth: "???"
What kind of "burping" is that!
Have you ever seen a burp drive someone insane?!
"As for this..."
Victor tore a small piece of still-pulsating muscle tissue from the wall and observed it closely.
"This isn't some ancient god flesh either."
"This is just a... 'malignant tumor' growing in a rather peculiar location."
Looking at the "tumor" in his hand that radiated a terrifying aura, Victor's eyes grew brighter, and his breathing became more rapid.
"Perfect cellular structure..."
"Superb energy activity..."
"It even possesses a degree of self-awareness..."
"My god... this is simply the Holy Grail of the medical world!"
He suddenly turned his head, the eyes behind his glasses bursting with an unprecedented, fanatical light—like a discoverer finding a new continent.
That light made both Elizabeth and Alice subconsciously take a step back.
They felt...
The current Director was a hundred times more terrifying than the flesh wall from before.
"No... this won't do..."
Victor paced back and forth excitedly, like a mad scientist about to solve the problem of the century.
"Just looking at the surface is useless."
"I must... I must figure out the internal structure of this thing!"
"Where is its energy core? What does its neural center look like? Has it formed an independent circulatory system?"
Countless questions filled with "scientific spirit" exploded in his mind.
A bold, crazy, and even sacrilegious thought sprouted in his heart.
He stopped abruptly.
His eyes, flashing with the light of a thirst for knowledge, stared intently at the writhing flesh wall, as if he were looking at a naked, peerless beauty.
"No."
"I have to... dig it out!"
"Dig... dig it out?!"
Elizabeth was so frightened her face lost its color.
"Director! Are you crazy?! There's an ancient god down there! People will die!"
"Die?"
Victor let out a cold laugh, his face showing the arrogance unique to a surgeon who views death as nothing.
"In my eyes, there are no gods, only patients."
"Never mind that it's just a half-dead ruin."
"Even if he were standing alive and kicking right in front of me..."
Victor took out the recently upgraded Rusty Saw of Redemption, which was now flashing with blue electric arcs, from his toolbox.
"As long as he has a 'lesion' on him."
"I'd dare... to perform a laparotomy on him!"
He turned around and issued a "death-seeking" command to his completely stunned employees.
"Roadhog! Go, bring that largest excavator to me!"
"Skeleton Security Brigade, grab your drills and explosives, follow me down!"
"Zoe, prepare the recording equipment. I am going to conduct an unprecedented 'archaeological excavation' and 'pathological study'!"
Victor raised his power saw, pointing it toward the bottomless darkness, his eyes burning with the roaring flames of "science."
"Ancient god?"
"Hmph."
"In my view..."
"That is merely... the world's largest 'pathogen'!"
"Today, I, as a doctor, shall act on behalf of heaven!"
"I'll dig it out... and study it thoroughly!"
Rate on N.U.
