12 Chapter 12: The Minor Boss and the Big Boss

It seemed that there were monsters on the bottom floor of the second building too. And, unsurprisingly, it was a boss-level creature.

But why did this monster swallow the key?

Bai Wu had discovered another detail.

The big boss of the fourth building must be the one mentioned in the notes as Little Pitiful, and the lesser boss of the second building was a naughty little thing. Wu Jiu was called Little Dwarf...

That was too arrogant, not matching his own refined and amiable, modest, and low-key nature. No, that couldn't possibly be his style.

"Let's go and have a look inside," he said.

Wu Jiu and Wang Shi were still leading the way.

Only then did Bai Wu begin to examine the spotlight on Wu Jiu, realizing that Wu Jiu had more than one treasure on him.

"It understood one thing from its brief existence as a lamp: the more you try to illuminate your surroundings, the more you attract annoying moths. The lamp's power has limits, so it no longer wanted to be a lamp! Now, all non-human creatures illuminated by the light will be slowed down. Spirit Possession rating: 4d."

Adding a petrification slowdown effect... Medusa's Lamp?

The light was not strong but sufficient to give a rough outline of the top floor of the second building.

After entering from the sky corridor, there was another corridor. The ceramic tiles on the floor were already broken, and the original scent of disinfectant in the air had been replaced by a foul smell.

Wu Jiu frowned; he really disliked such odors.

Bai Wu's gaze constantly swept around; there was almost no valuable information in the notes.

After turning a corner, the group arrived at the entrance to the next level down.

The floor indicator read nineteen, but the number nineteen was written over bloodstains, sloppy and uneven.

"This isn't the nineteenth floor; this is zero. The layer below you is negative one. Although you don't understand geomancy, you should know that this correlates to the ill-fated layout of the eighteen levels of hell. And your target is in the deepest part of hell. Moreover, you can't reach the depths of hell directly."

The last sentence made Bai Wu look towards the elevator entrance, where a seal was posted, and the notes for the elevator were simple.

"This building is quite pretentious; its master didn't want to install an elevator, so it pretends to have one."

Pretend?

At first glance, Bai Wu didn't even notice that the elevator doors and the button beside them were merely for show.

"It seems we have to go down through the stairs, floor by floor," said Bai Wu.

"The elevator button isn't working..." Shang Xiaoyi tried it out.

Going down each level meant increasing the time spent exploring. Bai Wu even suspected that the layout of the stairs was in a zigzag pattern.

One had to pass through the corridor on each floor to proceed to the next level down.

Without saying much else, led by Wu Jiu, they began their descent.

Wu Jiu remained calm; in fact, all the members of the group were experts who had trained in the blue zone and had seen even more bizarre scenes.

The current mental hospital was actually just intimidating in atmosphere; the difficulty of investigations outside the Tower was tied to the combat level of Evil Fallen.

"How did it become the negative first floor?"

Lin Wurou was uncomfortable; her OCD wanted to see the number nineteen followed by eighteen on the next level.

Suddenly, it went from the nineteenth floor to negative one, as if twenty floors had vanished into thin air.

Bai Wu said:

"This is a prison. Have you noticed? There is no light at all here. If the captain doesn't turn on the spotlight, one could say it is absolute darkness."

"So... so does that mean there are ghosts here..." Shang Xiaoyi pretended to be scared again.

Bai Wu patiently explained:

"Only absolute enclosure can create such absolute darkness. But we saw windows from outside the first building. It's daylight now; it shouldn't be so dark that no light enters at all. Plus, the elevator just now doesn't really exist; there's just a door made to look like one. These two points suggest one thing."

Now, the others understood. Yin Shuang was the first to catch on, and her tone shifted from cold to surprised:

"The whole building... is actually encased in a shell?"

"That's right, a shell for outsiders to see. The first building, the first few floors look normal like a mental hospital. But probably after the seventh or eighth floor, it becomes a laboratory. I haven't figured out the content of the experiments. The key is, starting with the second building, it becomes a thorough prison."

"Aren't they afraid of being investigated?" Shang Xiaoyi asked.

"I've thought about this question. Have you heard of Gotham City?"

"What's that?"

"A city with simple customs, which also has a similar hospital. So this hospital, being so blatantly involved in prohibited taboos, suggests the neighboring cities are... even more chaotic."

According to Bai Wu's guess, this hospital was in the outskirts of the city, the outskirts were a white zone, and the hospital itself was at least a blue zone.

The urban districts were also blue zones, and certain buildings within might be the more terrifying purple zones.

On the outskirts of a bizarre crime city, there was a hospital that conducted evil experiments and imprisoned monsters, which was as normal as it could get.

The situation on the first basement floor was indeed as Bai Wu had guessed.

The corridors were filled with surveillance cameras, and the walls were painted with various sinister blood-colored graffiti. But the walls themselves were exceptionally sturdy.

The doors to the ordinary wards were nowhere to be seen. Instead, revealed in the spotlight, were metal doors that were a hefty seventeen centimeters thick.

More than half of these doors were open, and even those that were closed had their locks long since damaged.

Bai Wu carefully examined each room but did not find Evil Fallen, although he still discovered some clues.

[Most levels of hell are both prisons and arenas. This place once housed a multitude of monsters, some were created here, while others were sent by a certain Masked Strange Person in the city. They fought fiercely among themselves, and only the most powerful monsters had the right to move to the next level.]

This was seen on the door of the twelfth room, and no other valuable information was found in the rest of the cells.

Bai Wu began to piece together the information.

"According to the note on Evil Fallen Body from the first building's ground floor, the year is 2026. Had humanity not yet entered the High Tower by then? So was the world outside the tower always this terrifying, or did it change gradually?"

"It seems that Wu Jiu and the others are also unclear about the history prior to The Era of the High Tower. This hospital gives me the feeling that it's something from a few years before the arrival of The Era of the High Tower… This annotation seems to confirm my guess. This hospital is not normal, and the city adjacent to this hospital is even more abnormal…"

As Bai Wu began to understand the world outside the tower bit by bit, he was not afraid but became even more excited.

They didn't encounter any Evil Fallen on the first basement floor, and Wu Jiu and his party quickly found the entrance to the second basement floor.

The second basement floor was almost identical to the first, except the walls on the first basement floor were relatively intact; the walls here began to show scratch marks.

So they went down to the next level.

In the time that followed, although the oppressive atmosphere grew heavier, they never encountered any Evil Fallen on any of the floors.

With each level they descended, the signs of battle became more apparent. By the time they reached the twelfth basement floor, the metal chamber doors even showed signs of distortion.

And on each level, Bai Wu could find somewhat valuable annotations in the twelfth room.

The style of these annotations was not about the door itself but seemed more like the inner thoughts of some monster that had once lived in this room.

Third floor:

[I ate Gro, and his sense of impending death was very useful to me. I'm about to head to the fourth floor, hoping to meet some interesting opponents.]

Fourth floor.

[I won't die. I've avoided all the deaths that I've sensed, but the food on this floor is not good at all. These guys aren't even worth being eaten by me.]

Sixth floor.

[I finally met an opponent that's a bit interesting. Out of respect, I'll eat it all up.]

Ninth floor.

[I can sense that there's no one left who can oppose me. The director fears me, the dean fears me, but I'll be very docile. I'll pretend to submit to them until I've devoured all the monsters.]

Tenth floor.

[I truly am the strongest.]

Thirteenth floor.

[I'm moving further away from the light, but I'm getting closer to the truth that the teacher spoke of. I'm about to become the complete form. When I get out, I'll become the teacher's strongest weapon and split that tower open.]

The tower...

Bai Wu intuitively felt that this tower likely wasn't the High Tower.

He didn't find the answer. By the fourteenth floor, he encountered a change.

[Impossible…this cannot be happening… How could I possibly lose? She's just a piece of trash from the first building. How could she compare to a genius like me? Ahhh! I'm going to eat her!]

This is getting interesting.

Little Pitiful from the eleventh floor was once transferred to the second building, which was actually both a prison and an arena.

The hospital tried to create an ultimate monster, and the boss of the second building, who had fought through many battles, got to the fourteenth floor only to have their winning streak ended by Little Pitiful, who had been temporarily transferred from the first building?

Bai Wu glanced again at the comb. No annotations popped out, but he now had some understanding.

The ultimate boss of the fourth building was once in the second building and had defeated the small boss there...

This comb... Perhaps it could give me access to the third building's pass without having to fight.

The teammates seemed to sense the presence of a super Evil Fallen and all became nervous.

Yet Bai Wu seemed to have foreseen a scene of clearing the game.

He proceeded to the fifteenth floor, and his previous conjectures were soon confirmed in the twelfth room.