Chapter 42: Visiting Day
The corridor fell into a strange, layered silence.
At one end, "family members" and doctors advanced slowly in an orderly line, as if this were nothing more than a routine hospital visit.
At the other end, patients stood stiffly under the gaze of the strange nurses, forcing smiles that didn’t belong to them.
And in the middle—Shen Yu, Yang Jin, Yuji, and the others—stood like something slightly out of place in a system that was still pretending to function.
Under normal perception, it looked like a formal visiting day.
Doctors in white coats walked ahead, followed by well-dressed men and women—wealthy relatives, visitors, people who looked like they belonged outside this place.
They glanced at the patients like exhibits behind glass.
"Your children are doing well," one doctor said casually. "Very cooperative today."
The patients responded with synchronized, sickly smiles.
"Hehehe..."
But under zero pollution vision, the truth was far more distorted.
The doctors were not human.
Their heads were massive, coiling snake forms, twisting slowly in the air as if tasting the atmosphere itself. Their bodies dragged behind them with unnatural weight, and behind their coats, long scorpion tails scraped against the floor, leaving wet grooves in the tiles.
The "family members" were worse.
Their faces were hollow masks with no eyes—only mouths where ears should be, opening and closing as they whispered silent judgments.
Every step they took produced a faint, metallic ding... ding... ding...
Like a bell counting down something unseen.
Yan Bing’s face paled.
"This... this is visiting day?" she whispered.
To her eyes, everything had become layered again—reality folding over something worse beneath it. The hospital wasn’t just corrupt. It was performing corruption like a ritual.
Yuji narrowed his eyes.
"This is not a normal event trigger," he said calmly. "It’s a structured cycle."
His gaze swept over the visiting line, then briefly toward Shen Yu.
"And cycles usually exist to collect something."
At that moment, Yang Jin leaned slightly closer to Shen Yu again, as if unconcerned with the approaching procession.
Her voice dropped.
"You’re not going to take that medicine, are you?"
Shen Yu didn’t answer immediately.
His eyes were on the visiting group—but not the people themselves.
He was watching their shadows.
They didn’t match.
Not even close.
Behind the group, something else was moving.
Not walking.
Not crawling.
Just... following the rhythm of the "ding" sound that kept repeating through the corridor, like it was syncing itself to the hospital’s heartbeat.
Shen Yu finally spoke, quietly.
"This isn’t visiting day."
He paused.
"It’s inspection day wearing a mask."
The distant bell sound grew louder.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
And for the first time, even the strange nurses stopped smiling.
Whenever these monsters passed a human chimera, the human chimera would tremble nervously, forcing out a sickly smile.
Oh... so it’s like this.
Shen Yu’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Under severe pollution, this looks like a normal family visit.
But under a clearer perception—when pollution is low enough to reveal truth—the scene shifts completely.
What looks like doctors and relatives... are actually snake-scorpion hybrid physicians and organ-swapping entities, walking through a staged "reunion."
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Yuji also sensed the shift.
The value on his headband flickered again, rising and falling between 0 and -15, like two overlapping worlds fighting for dominance.
Then—
A giant face leaned in front of him.
An eyeless man in a suit.
Except he wasn’t truly eyeless.
He had a single rotating eyeball embedded in his mouth, and glasses perched on his face like a mockery of human identity.
His ears split open slightly, forming dual mouths.
"Why aren’t you smiling?" it asked.
"Are you doing well?"
Two voices overlapped in the same sentence:
one calm, human-like
one distorted, inhuman
Yuji felt both at once.
His expression tightened.
Then he forced a smile.
"Heh... I’m fine."
The creature paused.
For a moment, both versions of it stared at him.
Then it withdrew, continuing its patrol.
On the other side of the corridor, things escalated.
A woman in a fur coat grabbed a mental patient.
"Why aren’t you smiling?"
The patient trembled violently.
"I was wrong... I was wrong... I’ll study hard... let me out..."
That single interaction triggered something.
Like a crack in a dam.
One by one, other patients began to panic.
They grabbed visiting "family members," begging to be taken away.
"I’ll change!"
"I can be better!"
"Take me out!"
Strangely—
The visitors didn’t refuse.
Some even nodded.
"Alright. If you want to leave, you can come with us."
And just like that, they picked them up—as if transferring property—and walked toward the exit.
Shen Yu observed silently.
So that’s the rule.
Patients can be "released" through compliance with the visiting system.
But what counts as release... is unclear.
Yan Bing suddenly spoke, shaken.
"Isn’t this dungeon about escaping the hospital? Then... can’t we just get taken away like them?"
The idea hung in the air.
At that moment—
A face appeared directly in front of Shen Yu, Yuji, and Puer.
A chubby woman.
A mole at the corner of her mouth.
Her expression looked almost... warm.
"You’re still here?" she asked Shen Yu, suspiciously.
Then softer:
"I can take you out, you know."
For a split second, something in Shen Yu’s mind reacted.
A false instinct.
A pull toward acceptance.
Toward safety.
Then Yang Jin’s earlier warning surfaced in his thoughts:
Don’t assume everything natural is safe.
Shen Yu smiled.
A perfectly controlled, meaningless smile.
"No need," he said calmly.
The woman stared for a moment.
Then sighed.
"Hehe... strange kid."
She left.
One by one, more patients were taken away.
The corridor began to thin out rapidly.
Half the participants were already gone.
And Shen Yu noticed something else—
His pollution level didn’t increase at all.
Meaning one thing:
Refusing the "visiting system" didn’t immediately trigger contamination.
It simply changed what world you were interacting with.
Behind him, Yuji’s eyes narrowed slightly.
And for the first time, he looked at Shen Yu differently.
Not as an E-class.
But as someone who had already started mapping the rules of the dungeon.
