Chapter 40

Posted by Kuze, ? Views, Released on January 23, 2025

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The hospital is the closest place to death.

Ironically, it is a space where people die the most, even though it is a place meant to save lives.

Naturally, the smell of death dominates that space.

The smell of death varies from place to place.

Sometimes it’s the cold, fishy stench of a corpse cooling down, and other times it’s the acrid smell of excrement from someone slowly waiting for death.

And the Clinic Center was a hospital filled with the stench of blood.

A smell of death that should never be experienced in a normal civilized society, one that can only be felt in a place where people are slaughtered like animals.

Patients closed their eyes, praying to survive, but they never opened them again.

In the operating room, in the treatment room, in the inpatient room.

Everywhere smelled of blood.

The only people free from that stench were the high-package customers.

Even the mid-tier packages weren’t free from this evil.

But that day, the owners of the blood filling the hospital were not the patients.

“What the hell is that!!”

The top floor of the hospital.

On the floor with a large sign saying “No Entry Except for Authorized Personnel,” the sound of screams and shouts echoed.

“Intruders! What the hell are the guys downstairs doing!”

Amon didn’t answer.

Most of them were already dead.

Neatly, without even a chance to report upstairs.

Until reaching the top floor, he had focused on infiltration and assassination, but now that only the top floor remained, there was no need for that anymore.

Besides, since the top floor was only for authorized personnel, there was no need to worry about innocent casualties.

“Amen.”

Amon ran down the corridor, holding a bone saw in one hand and a bundle of scalpels in the other.

Every time the bone saw, shrouded in an ominous aura, was swung, it cut through human bones as intended.

The scalpels he threw accurately hit the guards’ necks.

The guards didn’t just stand still either.

They fired guns and swung swords, trying to stop Amon’s charge.

But Amon slaughtered the guards with movements that were unimaginable for a human.

He slid left and right while running straight, closing several meters in a single step.

“What kind of implant is that!”

It was nothing like the movements of a Neural Acceleration Device.

Amon’s movements were barely visible to the eye, yet he seemed free from inertia and gravity.

The guards couldn’t even guess what kind of ability it was.

‘They wouldn’t have known about this usage.’

Cutting through the neck of a shocked guard, Amon vigorously moved his legs.

The Sky Step, at first glance, was an ability that allowed for a triple jump, but the applications of this triple jump were endless.

With enough leg strength, one could accelerate three times per step, or change direction without touching the ground.

It could even achieve a movement close to teleportation, something you’d only see in comics.

This setting was also reflected in games, where obtaining Essence would unlock abilities like double dashes or instant steps.

It wasn’t for nothing that Essence was tier 0 in games.

Even major corporations knew about these applications, which is why the Sky Step was an essential Essence for combat personnel at the level of Security Chief or higher.

Amon ran through the corridors, piling up the guards’ bodies.

He felt no guilt.

Thinking about the scenes he had witnessed on his way up, instead of guilt, a murderous intent naturally rose within him.

‘Is that really something a human would do?’

Just the report on the experiment being conducted in the inpatient room on the 4th floor alone contained things that were hard to imagine a human doing.

——————————–

Room 401.

An experiment to see if it’s possible to gaslight a subject by installing a device that sends signals to the limbic system, which controls human emotions.

Conclusion: Failure. The subject fell into a coma and is scheduled to have their organs extracted and disposed of tomorrow.

Room 403.

Antibiotics administered to the mother. Checking the development status of the fetus. Miscarriage of one of the twins confirmed.

Room 407….

——————————–

Similar contents were seen in the reports from the 5th, 6th, and 7th floors.

Just reading them made one nauseous.

In the process, the guards not only assisted the experiments but actively aided them.

If necessary, they would shock patients with electric prods or point guns at them to induce stress responses.

Sometimes they would even shoot them in the limbs.

That’s why it was impossible to feel guilt toward the guards.

“Kill that bastard!!”

At first, the shouts to kill Amon were filled with rage.

“What the hell! Where did that monster come from!”

Then it turned to shock.

“Please, spare me!!”

“Open the door! Open the door!!”

As time passed, it turned to fear.

Only three guards remained.

Amon’s shadow loomed over the three guards desperately knocking on the door.

With the flickering light behind him, the blood-soaked Amon looked down at the mercenaries.

They had lost the will to resist and were signaling their surrender.

“Please! I don’t know anything!”

“Is it money? I’ll give you as much as you want!”

“Was it about family? If so, I’ll testify for you! So please—”

Swipe.

Amon showed no mercy even to those filled with fear.

Three more skulls were added to the corridor.

After clearing away the headless bodies, Amon looked at the door they had been desperately knocking on.

<Director’s Office>

Click, click.

The thick iron door didn’t open.

It seemed to be locked from the inside.

‘I have a plan for this.’

Amon dashed to a nearby window.

And then, stepping on thin air, he twisted his body toward the window right next to the one he had just jumped out of.

Beyond the window, he could see the director’s face anxiously staring at the iron door.

‘Found you.’

As he kicked off the air, he threw the bone saw.

Crash!

As the window shattered, the director’s head turned toward Amon.

But by the time he reacted to the sound, the bone saw was already embedded in his shoulder.

“Ugh!!”

The director, who had been sitting in his chair, collapsed to the floor.

While the director was still unable to scream properly from the pain, Amon entered the room through the broken window.

And before the director could regain his senses, Amon pierced his chest with a Japanese sword he had taken from a guard.

“Gurgle…”

The scream couldn’t even make a proper sound as it escaped through the hole in his lung.

The director trembled as he looked at Amon.

“Why…”

Before the director could speak,

Amon pulled the bone saw from his shoulder and slashed his neck.

The director’s head rolled on the floor.

Amon pushed the body with the sword still stuck in it to the side and set the fallen chair upright.

He immediately began operating the computer.

‘I need evidence.’

The reason Amon could rampage through the center was because the boss of the intermediary had promised to back him up.

However, there was a condition.

To gather as much evidence as possible to prove that the medical staff of this hospital were scum who deserved to be torn apart.

Only then could they use that as material to threaten or negotiate to cover Amon’s back.

That’s why Amon needed the director’s data.

He checked the contents one by one and transferred the files to a USB.

[Transfer Complete]

A notification popped up, and he stood up.

“Think of it as karma.”

Swoosh.

He pulled the sword stuck in the director and sheathed it again.

Stepping over the pool of the director’s blood that had soaked the floor, he walked out of the director’s office.

The corridor of the ward, filled with corpses, stretched out before him.

Unlike when he entered, the path out of the center was quiet.

It was only in that quiet that Amon’s head began to clear.

He had acted on impulse upon seeing his and Sonia’s names on the list of test subjects.

But only after the rampage did he realize something strange.

‘Why were they acquaintances?’

No matter how short they were on samples, why would they go through the trouble of using the police to kidnap acquaintances?

In fact, coldly thinking about it, family would have been much more convenient.

Just like how Humph’s younger brother was used to make Humph a test subject, using guardians as test subjects would have been much simpler.

Acquaintances were too…

‘Awkward. And the range is too wide.’

Acquaintances could include neighbors or shop owners.

So why specifically party members?

Just before exiting through the hospital’s back door, Amon’s steps halted.

He stood there, lost in thought.

‘I’ve missed something.’

Perhaps the premise was wrong.

Amon’s mind raced.

Then, suddenly, he remembered the report format he had seen on the doctor’s computer.

Amon Perfumerose, Sonia Perfumerose,

Orc Tanker, Elf Mage…

“Huh?”

Amon’s shoulders twitched.

There was only one hypothesis that could explain the current situation.

“No way…”

To prove his hypothesis, Amon hurriedly grabbed the back door’s handle.

That’s when it happened.

The moment he grabbed the handle, his intuition rang an alarm.

It wasn’t baseless intuition.

The other side of the door… was too quiet.

No matter how much the back alley would spread out when the back door was opened, it shouldn’t be this quiet.

Amon let go of the handle.

And then he went back up to the second floor and peeked out the window.

Beastmen were aiming their guns at the back door.

And in the middle of the beastmen was a familiar face.

‘Paul…!’

The party’s trash Machine Gunner.

Paul, the bear beastman.

***

In the back alley of the Clinic Center.

Amidst the numerous beastmen aiming at the back door, a cat beastman whispered to Paul.

“Boss. Can’t we just go in?”

Paul waved his paw-marked hand and scolded the cat beastman.

“Shut up. That guy’s a close-combat fighter. I shot him in the back of the head, and he reacted to the bullets. His equipment’s good too. If we openly shoot at him, I’d be dead on the spot.”

“He’s a bit different from the usual trash we deal with, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s not just a bit. If we give him any distance, all our necks are gonna fly.”

“Boss… isn’t that dangerous? Shouldn’t we just naturally target the idiots who got taken out by slimes last time?”

The anxious cat beastman was joined by a rabbit beastman twitching his ears in agreement.

“Yeah, boss. Plus, that guy took out the Scavengers, right? Of course, the Scavengers are on a whole different level from us, but it’s still dangerous.”

Starting with the rabbit beastman, the beastmen present began to fall into unease.

“Seems like the hospital guys called us for backup and then died first.”

“No need to keep loyalty to dead guys.”

“Is it really worth taking this risk?”

Even before the fight started, the group began to lose their fighting spirit.

The barrels of their guns, aimed at the back door, gradually lowered.

Then, Paul spoke to the group.

“If we just sell that guy’s equipment, our miserable lives are over. I guarantee it.”

“Huh?”

“Whether we sell his equipment or keep it, if we just kill him, we can grow from a crew to a gang-level organization.”

“But it’s too dangerous.”

“Of course it is. But only if he’s in perfect condition.”

“Huh?”

“I never expected those Clinic guys to kill him. What I hoped for was that they’d strip his equipment and drain his strength as much as possible in the hospital.”

“You mean…”

“Think about it logically. There’s no way he’s unharmed after dealing with the hospital’s guards.”

Hearing Paul’s words, the group’s gun barrels began to rise again.

Hope began to spread among them.

Before they knew it, they began to justify and rationalize their actions in their own ways.

“Yeah, it’s about time we stopped dealing with those hospital guys.”

“They’ve been starting to distance themselves from us lately.”

“Honestly, they were probably planning to pin everything on us anyway. This is clean.”

Hearing the crew’s conversation, Paul’s lips curled up slightly.

Swept up in the mood, the cat beastman praised Paul’s strategy.

“The basics of hunting are to weaken the prey’s strength! Right?!”

“Yeah.”

The crew regained their energy.

They began to feel confident that they could take down a wounded Amon.

Some were already discussing what equipment they’d get and what kind of life they’d live with the spoils from this hunt.

Paul viewed this atmosphere very positively.

Having confidence before a hunt was a good thing.

A confident hunter had a much higher success rate than one paralyzed by fear.

Riding this momentum, Paul shared new news to keep their morale high.

“The cops checked the database, and it turns out that guy has a wife too. Sonia Rose or something? She’s an orphan too, so she’d be easy to manipulate. If we use Amon as bait, it’ll be simple.”

“So we have to keep Amon alive?”

“Just keep his head. They’re newlyweds, I think. If we send a photo, she’ll come running.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Big chest.”

“Hell yeah.”

The rabbit beastman puffed out his chest.

The beastmen covered their fear with their own desires and focused again on the back door where Amon would emerge.

Their gaze was fixed on the bomb attached to the door handle.

“Come on, rabbit.”

The wolf beastman licked his lips.

“You called me?”

The rabbit beastman looked at the wolf beastman like he was crazy.