Why is my journey to the world of anime a strange tale of rules?

After something was removed from the patient's body, the patients became completely quiet.

They are still breathing, they can still eat, and they can still blink.

They remained silent, no longer reacting to anything, simply staying still, as if waiting for something.

Ah, is this happiness? I've found it, I've finally found it!

And so they actually got what they were waiting for.

Not an angel.

Rather, it is a terrifying demon, something that crawls out of a bottomless nightmare.

It can see.

It knows they are still here.

It found within them, in their quietude, what still existed within them, what had been cut away but could not be truly erased.

Everything is inside the cave.

All happiness, all good things, are inside the cave.

Then just jump.

Isn't it enough to just jump, to accept everything? Wouldn't that be perfect?

Come on, let's do it together.

This is the end of everything, this is the best choice, this is—

boom! ! !

After another violent explosion, twisted headless monsters and those things became entangled together.

Blood-red chalk drew doors on the ground, which then actually formed a door, capturing those mad phantoms and throwing them in one by one, banishing them from here.

"Huh...huh...huh..."

After taking off his charred jacket, Xiong Mi, wearing a tactical vest, revealed his muscular arms. He leaned against the half-collapsed wall, holding a chainsaw and panting heavily.

Half of her body was soaked in blood. Even though the wound had mostly healed, she couldn't immediately replenish the strength she had lost, so she didn't even have the strength to stand up for a while and had to lean against the wall to avoid collapsing.

On the other side, Jianbing was also in a sorry state, sitting on the ground covered in blood and grime, with one of his arms torn off. However, Jianbing still had a little strength left, so he forced himself to take out the [Reality Interference Program] and, through a series of operations, refreshed and reset both his own body and Xiongmi's body, thereby healing all wounds and restoring all his strength, avoiding the embarrassing situation of being defeated as soon as he stepped into the new area.

"It's more powerful than expected. It seems that our real strength hasn't been released into the real world; it's all waiting for us in the deeper parts of the instance. Phew... I wonder if the others will encounter similar situations when they come up. Cat Bro should be fine. I hope those two Red Society members won't get killed."

As Xiong Mi spoke, she patted the dust off her body, enduring the intense dizziness caused by the mental erosion, and began to observe her surroundings.

Upon entering, they were immediately overwhelmed by a horde of over 50 Red Moon-level monsters, leaving no time to assess their surroundings. Only now, having finally won the battle, do they have a chance to take a look. Hmm... it's almost unrecognizable what it originally looked like; it seems the fight was quite brutal...

Although it wasn't intentional, a death match at the Red Moon level was clearly no joke. At this moment, in Xiong Mi's view, almost everything around him was completely destroyed, and there was hardly anything that was still intact.

However, Xiong Mi soon noticed that the destroyed walls and floors, as well as all sorts of other things, were rapidly recovering.

One second ago, there were only some broken walls left beside me, and the next second the walls were basically restored to their original state, except for some burn marks. The next second, even these burn marks disappeared without a trace.

The scattered pebbles that used to be everywhere have disappeared, as if an unseen cleaner had quietly swept up the place without Xiong Mi and Jian Bing noticing, leaving only a clean corridor floor.

"Such a fast recovery speed."

Jianbing stood up from the ground and looked at the hospital corridor, which had been completely restored, and couldn't help but speak.

“We’re closer to the core obsession. This level of power is impossible to achieve without the involvement of high-level monsters. Heh, maybe we’ll be the first team to find the core obsession. If we really do leave the others behind, I can laugh at them for three months.”

As Xiong Mi spoke, he carried a chainsaw to the elevator where the two of them had come up.

At this moment, the elevator door has been completely destroyed, and the interior of the elevator has become a mess due to the high temperature and various attacks. It is obviously no longer a normal elevator and might fall apart if you step into it.

It seems there's no way to get back using this elevator.

Xiong Mi wasn't surprised; after such a fierce battle, this thing couldn't possibly have remained intact. However, the power here was clearly capable of repairing damage to an entire floor, yet it couldn't repair this elevator. Why was that?

Is there something special about the elevator in this instance?

"Sister Xiong Mi, here's a map."

Jianbing's voice rang out from not far away. Xiong Mi turned his head and saw the map hanging on the wall that Jianbing was pointing to.

She walked over, her gaze sweeping across the slightly yellowed old map, looking at the various rooms such as the [2nd Floor Nurse Station], [Treatment Room], and [Observation Room], confirming that this map should indeed be a map of the hospital's second floor.

Hopefully, the spatial distortion on this floor won't be too severe, otherwise the map will be useless even if we get it.

As Xiong Mi was thinking this, her gaze fell upon a small note tucked between the edges of the map.

It seems to have been deliberately placed here by someone, perhaps anticipating that people coming here would look for a map, so they left this thing here.

Reaching out, Xiong Mi pulled out the slip of paper, opened it, and discovered that it was actually a new summary document of rules.

Survival Guidelines in Older Hospital Wards

[A tribute to all those who have not given up on survival; may this information reach those who truly need it.]

We haven't given up, we haven't fallen into the hole yet, and this rule will continue to be updated until none of us survive.

[1. The patient will definitely reach this floor and find their assigned room.]

But never enter the ward, never enter your own private space; those places don't truly belong to you, they're just part of a trap.

2. Avoid patients wandering around this floor. If you cannot avoid them, immediately squat down and cover your head to avoid being touched by patients.

They have fallen into the cave, leaving behind only soulless shells. Do not let them touch your head. As long as they do not actually touch you, you can continue to remain in this world.

[3. There is no operating room on this floor. Do not attempt to find or enter the operating room.]

That place is a hole; it will force each and every one of us to crawl through it. Don't go there, never go there.

[4. Doctors who use flashlights are trustworthy, but doctors who operate in the dark without any lighting are absolutely untrustworthy; they are not doctors.]

They also found their own hole; some had already jumped in, while others hadn't, and those who jumped in couldn't come back.

5. Dreams are dangerous. A dream of falling represents the process of searching for a cave. Don't fall in your dream; swim upwards.

[This is incorrect, incorrect, incorrect, incorrect, incorrect, correct.]

6. Do not approach nurses whose faces are not clearly visible, but you can talk to them and ask for their help.

They were just following instructions. They are trustworthy, they should be trustworthy. Doctors and nurses are trustworthy; they are there to heal you.

7. Whispers in your ear are nonexistent. No matter what you hear, they will ultimately only lead you to your cave. Don't believe them.

Is the babbling just babbling, or is it a real thing? Escape, don't stay where you are, you must escape the babbling.

8. There are only patients, doctors, and nurses here. There is no fourth type of person here.

If you see it, tell the murmuring fourth type of person where it is; it will know what to do.

[9. We are still looking for a way out. We haven't left yet. A way out exists.]

[Elevator - No Escape]

[Staircase - No Escape]

[The door - impossible to escape]

[Window - Vanished? Unable to know if they escaped]

[Observation Room - ?]

[Women's Bathing Area - ?]

[Therapy Rooms - Here They Are]

[Operating Room - No Way Out! Escape ...]

[A downward hole - is it possible? Escape*? Leave &%? ? ? ? ]

【Remark:】

The cave is downward; going down means going into the cave, going down means entering your own cave. Don't go down, don't go down, once you go down you can't come back.

Compared to the rule sheet I received at the outpatient clinic on the first floor, this one was more disorganized. However, the handwriting was almost completely intact, and the text was clearly legible. Of course, recognizing the text was only one part; understanding its meaning was another.

It seems that every document keeps emphasizing the existence of the "hole".

What exactly is this "hole"? Is it a metaphor for some kind of subconscious existence? Is it a term for some abstract philosophical concept? Or is it simply an adjective describing the power of a core obsession or something stronger than that core obsession?

Xiong Mi speculated about the true nature of this thing, his gaze shifting back and forth across the rules and regulations. After a long while, he sighed softly and carefully put the rule document away again.

Regardless, this can be considered as obtaining some new information.

This nameless hospital, it seems, already had some dangerous entity operating within it back in the real world. The first targets that entity appeared to be patients who had their frontal lobes removed. Xiong Mi doesn't know exactly what it did, but she suspects it might be related to the operating room. It's likely that something happened in the operating room that caused the hospital's rapid decline, leading to its current state.

There's something else lying on the ground; I'm not sure if it's useful.

After confirming that Xiong Mi had not been affected by mind contamination, Jianbing gestured to her to the documents scattered on the ground.

These are some documents that fell to the ground and landed in a corner near the back door of the nurses' station on the second floor. It's unclear what happened to cause them to be left there unattended for so long.

After a moment of self-examination, Xiong Mi decisively began to peruse the documents, only to find that most of them were blank sheets of paper without any text. Somewhat unconvinced, Xiong Mi examined several more documents that had fallen to the ground. After reviewing more than ten blank documents, she finally found one with some written text that looked clean and new.

[Regarding the in-depth cooperation plan between the Hert Institute and Dansul Company]

The new brainwave stimulation device is 15 times more effective than the old version, and prolonged use can create a certain degree of psychological suggestion for the patient.

The plan to use this device to find "holes" should not be approved at this time. The institute has already spent a lot of money and manpower on this research, and the experiment should not be started again until a valid conclusion is obtained.

[Dansuo Company, an investor in the research institute, has proposed deepening cooperation and is willing to donate more funds. In exchange, Dansuo Company hopes we can provide a more advanced new brainwave instrument. Their eagerness for this instrument is highly suspicious and may be hiding something they don't want to reveal; we must treat this with caution.]

Furthermore, a new round of investigation into the ■■ Hospital has confirmed that there are no living people remaining in the building. Whatever once existed there is no longer anything; we cannot even find any relevant information in past records. Given the current lack of further progress, exploration of the hospital ruins should be temporarily suspended. The suggestion from Dansu Company to form an exploration team must also be firmly rejected to avoid involving more people.

Does our research institute truly have a reason to warrant investment from such a large corporation? (The last sentence is handwritten.)

Where did Dansu Company come from?

To be honest, Xiong Mi was starting to feel a bit of a headache. She knew that a Red Moon-level instance often contained more than one area, with significant time spans and environmental variations. The area she was currently investigating and exploring was only one area of ​​one instance. However, because this instance had now become a super hybrid, she wasn't even sure if this research institute and the Dansu Company were the same as this hospital, and she had absolutely no idea how to find a way to reach those two areas.

The clues are piling up and getting more and more confusing. It's already like this in just one place. If we continue to investigate, who knows what else we'll encounter... Oh well, it's better to take it one step at a time than to stay put and wait to die!

"Let's go, keep going, and see what's unusual about this place."

Composing himself, Xiong Mi stood up and spoke to Jianbing behind him. The two then moved forward, heading towards the half-open back door of the nurses' station on the second floor, intending to investigate what little secrets were hidden there.

……

While the various groups within the "Slacking Off" gang had already focused and begun moving along their respective investigation directions, there was another group of players who were slightly different and were currently in a state of confusion.

"What... what's going on here?"