LWGP - Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Awakening
This time, Zhang Xu didn't fail his profession; he confirmed that the person was still alive.
The three of them were shocked by the man's vitality, because his body was a truly gruesome sight. Not only had his limbs been severed, but his abdomen was also...
"It must be the System's doing. When that psycho lost, he was furious and wanted to kill us even more, so he didn't continue his work on this guy. Instead, he smashed through the wall to chase us."
"What do we do now? Can he still be saved?"
As normal human beings, especially with their medical backgrounds, Li Meng and Zhang Xu found the sight unbearable. But they also knew this was a survival dungeon, and time was of the essence.
The main issue was his physical condition. Given the medical facilities here, he was nine times out of ten beyond saving.
After so many years in a hospital, it was harder to be a bleeding heart. The two had already silently given up on him when Wang Jiu suddenly spoke. "Li Meng, put that knife down for a moment. I'll try something."
Huh? Though curious, Li Meng immediately relinquished her newly acquired scalpel. She then saw Wang Jiu place a hand on the chest of the barely breathing man... Collect!
The System's voice suddenly popped up.
"Confirm collection?"
Wang Jiu's eyebrow arched slightly. "Confirm."
The System immediately displayed another prompt. "Weakling No. 1, you do not have an inventory and cannot absorb him. Do you wish to return him to reality?"
Just as she thought!
When Wang Jiu had first entered and discovered the man wasn't dead yet, she had suspected the System was keeping him alive by a thread. Under normal circumstances, this person shouldn't have survived. Why would the System help him?
Unless, like that fatty she had operated on before, he was a tool person!
Since he was a tool person, he might be treated as an item, and perhaps his purpose in a quest had yet to be uncovered.
It was worth a try; it didn't cost her anything.
In any case, there was no way she would actually perform surgery on him to gamble on that slim chance of survival. They had three lives of their own to worry about.
"Return him," Wang Jiu said decisively.
In an instant, the "corpse" on the operating table vanished.
Li Meng was both happy and worried. "I wonder if he'll survive when he gets back to reality?"
"The chunks of his limbs disappeared with him, which means the System considers them part of a whole. Maybe he'll be restored once he's out. After all, compared to that fatty Wang Shu, the luck gap between an RNG God and a total wash-out is huge. The System can't possibly refuse to even pay a tool person for his hard labor, right?"
Wang Jiu had determined that the fatty Wang Shu had RNG God status. Whether it was being a hair's breadth from death after his severe injuries, or falling into a dungeon only to land in their hands, he had coasted to victory the whole time.
"Instead of worrying about him, we should be worrying about ourselves."
They had sent away two tool people, but their own situation hadn't improved.
Director Wang's powers of observation had always been incredible, a fact Li Meng had come to deeply appreciate. However, Zhang Xu figured that since Lao Wang had just cleared a small hidden side quest and possibly saved the victim, shouldn't there be some other reward?
After a careful inspection, Zhang Xu suddenly used a nearby towel to wipe the operating table where the body had been lying. As the blood was wiped away, blood-red characters were revealed—Awakening.
The two words were enclosed in a square red line.
Zhang Xu was pleased with the discovery but also clueless. "What does this mean?"
Wang Jiu looked at it and thought for a moment. "The pigment of this red line is the same as the characters, which means its significance is equal to the words—they're both clues. This square might refer to the room. Something is locked in the room and is about to awaken. As for what is awakening, I don't know."
Wang Jiu's guess sounded the most logical. Zhang Xu's gamer mode switched on, and he immediately reasoned, "This Dog System always sets up one trap after another. Let's work backward. If you hadn't saved that guy, Lao Wang, we wouldn't have seen this hint. In that case, we would have gone to the other rooms to collect the remaining rewards, and we would have likely run into this thing that's supposedly about to awaken?"
Thinking it through, the three of them cursed in unison: Dog System! Fuck!
For safety's sake, the three were unwilling to take the risk. What if the other rooms also contained a psycho murderer like the one before? Hadn't they heard screams earlier?
Maybe opening a door would be tantamount to suicide.
But to just give up on the rewards?
They felt a little unwilling.
Li Meng said, "Why don't we ask the System if we can choose from just one room? We can try to negotiate."
Was that possible? As the representatives of calm, rational science, Wang Jiu and Zhang Xu weren't optimistic, but they let Li Meng give it a try.
Li Meng was the softest of the three, a model liberal arts major. She put on a cutesy voice and began, "Brother System, can we discuss something..."
The last syllable sounded like a spider's thread being drawn out from the deepest crevices of her organs.
System: "You may."
Wang Jiu and Zhang Xu: "..."
Could the Dog System be a middle-aged, foot-picking slob who hasn't seen a girl in eight hundred years?
System: "You can choose to forfeit, or you can choose to collect four more items from one room."
It had automatically deducted the dismembered tool person they had just sent away.
Was there even a choice? Although the reward was halved, it was definitely the conservative way to maximize their gains.
Four items. What to choose?
The three selected a small backpack, a box of bandages, a box of thrombin for hemostasis, and another scalpel like the one they had given Li Meng before.
The bandages and medicine were placed in the small backpack and given to Zhang Xu for safekeeping.
All three now had weapons, and the rest of the items were medical supplies. It fit their professional backgrounds, but it also fit the theme of this dungeon—staying alive is all that matters!
After grabbing the items, they noticed that the time lock had only five minutes remaining.
"I think it said the room doors would unlock after thirty minutes. Does that mean just our two rooms, or all of them?"
It was best not to be too optimistic. The three quickly left the room and headed for the elevator, where they noticed something worth paying attention to.
"The elevator's number has changed."
It meant someone had used it to go up or down. Whether the person was a "survivor" like them or one of the murderers, it was hard to say.
"This is the fourth floor. Why don't we just take the stairs down?"
Just as Zhang Xu said that, bang!
A gunshot suddenly rang out.
The three of them were stunned.
The sound came from outside! Wang Jiu quickly ran to the window next to the elevator and looked out, getting a direct view of the scene outside the hospital.
It was a barren plain, with this hospital seemingly the only building in existence. The hospital courtyard was square, enclosed by walls two stories high. The courtyard gate was thick, seemingly made of heavy iron, and tightly shut. The yard itself was desolate, with no greenery or anything else.
Just one living person and one dead one.
The living person was holding a gun. He was tall and burly, a living embodiment of a murderer with a gun.
As for the dead person, they were lying on the ground. A single bullet had ended everything.
As Wang Jiu and the others watched, the gunman seemed to sense them. He slowly turned around and leisurely aimed his gun toward the hospital, as if the muzzle was targeting someone.
Li Meng and Zhang Xu were terrified, thinking he was going to shoot them.
Wang Jiu also moved aside, but she walked toward the elevator. "I don't think he's aiming at us. He's aiming at the entire hospital, up and down... all twelve floors of survivors. It's like a threat, an intimidation, to stop us from escaping the hospital, not even letting us into the courtyard."
He was just striking a sniper's pose. He wasn't even looking through a scope. He couldn't shoot a damn thing.
They definitely couldn't get out, and there was no point in going down, not with a gunman on guard.
The three entered the elevator, unsure of where to go.
The main quest. They still had no idea what the main quest was.
Wang Jiu pondered for a moment. "I know what the main quest is."
"What?"
"The key. The key to the main gate of the courtyard outside. Without the key, no one can get out."
Simple, brutal, and straight to the point.
Zhang Xu had a flash of realization. "I think I saw it just now, too. That gate lock looked really heavy. Even a gunshot probably wouldn't open it. We have to use the key."
But where could they find the key?
"Maybe you should ask Brother System again, Li Meng?" Wang Jiu suggested.
Li Meng blushed shyly, but she expertly switched to her delicate voice. The System responded.
"It's no use even if you call me daddy. Find the clues yourselves."
The three of them: "..."
The foot-picking, slobbish Dog System was probably the cold and heartless type after getting what he wanted.
"I guess we'll have to bet on our luck."
Wang Jiu pointed at the elevator buttons. Several of them were dirty, but one spot was particularly obvious.
"The button for the eleventh floor has the most blood on it, and it's been repeatedly dried and stained again."
"That means the most people have gone to the eleventh floor."
Trust the choices of the other survivors? It wasn't like they had any better ideas.
Zhang Xu decisively pressed the button for the eleventh floor. However, Wang Jiu also pressed the buttons for the tenth and twelfth floors. The purpose, of course, was to create a diversion. If some murderer below saw the elevator rising and stopping, guessed they were on the eleventh floor, and came after them, that would be far from ideal.
Calculating the time, Wang Jiu also unlocked all the room doors on the fourth floor ahead of schedule.
If some dangerous creature really was awakening, it would at most be contained until the thirty-minute door lock expired. They were leaving the fourth floor now, so the remaining two or three minutes didn't matter much to them. But if there were other survivors in the other rooms... it would make a huge difference.
And after Wang Jiu activated her authority, click... all the other room doors on the fourth floor unlocked.
Not long after they opened... a total of twelve people rushed out from the other eight rooms. The first three to emerge ran as if their asses were on fire.
"Hurry!"
"It's about to wake up!"
"Motherfucker, which son of a bitch threw me into this shitty dungeon, and into such a terrifying room of all places!!"
These three were undoubtedly sharp, but there were always some idiots who didn't know what was good for them.
For example, the people who had been locked in the ninth room hadn't had the bad luck of being next door to a psycho murderer like Wang Jiu's group. They had just been locked up, feeling uneasy and suspicious for a while. After the door unlocked, they cautiously came out. Seeing a group of people running, they were confused and wanted to run too. But one of them was curious. Not only did he dawdle, but he also glanced curiously toward the fifth room.
At that moment, the first three people, who had already dashed into the elevator and were frantically pressing buttons without any time for pleasantries, saw the man approach the fifth room just before the elevator doors closed.
"That idiot!"
"He's asking to die."
"Get over here, quick..."
Driven by the humanity most people possess, someone shouted in a hushed voice, while another gestured for him to come over, wanting to save his life, but...
Swish!
A black shadow seemed to lash out from within the room. The person peeking in at the doorway was dragged inside. There wasn't even a scream. A long line of blood splattered across the doorway, and then a head rolled out with a soft thud. The bloody neck slid along the floor, and the head's features came to rest facing the elevator. The unlucky bastard's blood-soaked face was frozen in an expression of terror, staring blankly at them.
Someone started to cry in fear, and then the elevator doors slid shut with a whoosh.
A moment later, a long, black shadow slithered out into the empty fourth-floor hallway.
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