Chapter 118
Chapter 118: Sweating?
Seattle Mercy Hospital, 7th Floor.
The Plague Ghost stood in the center of the ward and shook its head hard.
Its eyes gradually regained focus.
It looked around. The room was empty.
The man who had made a monkey of it was long gone.
It looked left and right, and finally found a slip of paper on the floor near the doorway.
It walked over and picked it up.
On it was a stick figure drawing.
A large hand pressing down on a head, as if patting a child affectionately.
A head pat.
The Plague Ghost stared at that slip of paper for a full 3 seconds.
Then...
Visibly, it turned red with rage.
"That damned insufferable clown!!!"
It tore the paper to shreds and flipped over the bed beside it!
Crash!
The bed slammed into the wall and fell apart.
"I will turn you into a breeding ground for my insects!!!"
The Plague Ghost's chest heaved violently.
It spun in place twice but ultimately suppressed the urge to give chase.
No.
The Thousand-Face Demon Lord's orders were to stall for time.
It was responsible for the 7th floor and below, that lunatic Head Nurse Charlotte was responsible for the 8th floor and above, and the Chief of Orthopedics covered the floors beyond that.
As long as they could stall these humans and allow the Hospital Director to successfully kill Tiffany...
The Plague Ghost drew a deep breath and forced itself to calm down.
"Back to the 10th floor."
It turned and walked out of the ward.
The elevator doors opened, and it pressed the button for the 9th floor.
The 10th floor couldn't be reached directly by elevator—one had to take a special corridor from the 9th floor up.
Ding.
The elevator doors opened on the 9th floor.
The Plague Ghost stepped out.
The next second, it froze.
Darkness.
What greeted its eyes was pitch darkness.
The 9th floor was supposed to be the brightly lit core area of the Ghost Doctors—those lights never went out.
But now, the corridor was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
"Did the lights break?"
The Plague Ghost stepped out of the elevator with a puzzled frown and walked a few steps forward.
Just then.
"Ahhhh!!!"
A scream came from deep within the corridor!
That sound carried terror, but it lasted only half a second before cutting off abruptly.
The Plague Ghost's entire body went rigid.
It turned its head toward the direction of the sound—the western corridor.
"What's going on?"
It hesitated for a second, then stepped toward that direction anyway.
There was no way an intruder could have gotten up here.
With Head Nurse Charlotte present, the 9th floor was impregnable.
That lunatic woman, though a hopeless romantic, had genuine S-Grade strength.
And then there was that wretched domain...
Even it wouldn't dare claim it could win.
The Plague Ghost thought as it walked.
But after just a few steps, a sticky sensation suddenly came from beneath its feet.
It looked down at the floor.
In an instant, the whole ghost felt dread wash over it.
Black blood.
Black blood everywhere.
That viscous liquid was nearly invisible in the darkness—you could only feel it when you stepped in it.
It flowed along the cracks between the floor tiles, winding into countless thin rivulets.
The Plague Ghost's heartbeat skipped—if it still had a heartbeat.
The 9th floor...
What had happened here?
It forcibly suppressed that inexplicable sense of dread and continued forward.
But the further it walked, the more unsettled it became.
On the left wall, a massive claw mark had torn through nearly the entire surface!
The reinforced concrete wall had been physically ripped open, exposing the steel rebar inside—also severed.
On the right, a figure in a white lab coat had been nailed to the wall.
No—plastered into the wall.
Flesh and black blood were mixed together, smeared across the surface.
Only half a Bird-Beak Mask remained, just barely enough to identify who it had been.
Flattened into a 2-dimensional paper ghost.
That had been a high-ranking Ghost Doctor.
A B+-Grade Cursed Creature...
The Plague Ghost felt something slide down from its forehead.
It instinctively wiped it.
Water.
Sweat.
“Ha... ha-ha...”
It let out a hollow laugh and quickened its pace.
These claw marks...
Could it be that the monsters from the laboratory had escaped?
No, those things had long since been stored by the Hospital Director in the Morgue on Basement Level 1, sealed by special suppression measures...
Could one have slipped through?
It kept reassuring itself as it pressed deeper.
But the carnage around it only grew denser.
More and more claw marks.
From 1 becoming 2.
From 2 becoming a dense, web-like network.
More and more 2-dimensional paper ghosts plastered onto the walls.
Ghost Doctors who had been smashed into the walls by some immense force.
Bodies flattened like sheets of paper, faces still frozen in the terror of their final moments.
The Plague Ghost's footsteps grew faster and faster, nearly breaking into a jog.
It didn't dare stop.
Didn't dare look closely.
Didn't dare think.
Finally, after a minute of torment, the carnage around it disappeared.
It stood at the very center of a cross-shaped corridor.
Empty on all sides.
No corpses.
No claw marks.
Only normal walls and the occasional emergency light flickering to life.
The Plague Ghost braced its hands on its knees, gasping in ragged breaths.
"Hah... hah... finally... it's over..."
It straightened up.
But right at that moment...
Clatter.
Something round rolled out of the darkness and bumped against its foot.
"Ahh!!!"
The Plague Ghost let out a startled scream and stumbled sideways several steps!
But it didn't land on solid ground.
Its back collided with something soft.
No—it wasn't a collision.
Something had caught it.
The Plague Ghost's head turned stiffly backward.
And then it saw it.
A mountain.
A mountain built from corpses.
Dozens of Ghost Doctor and ghost nurse corpses, stacked carelessly atop one another, nearly reaching the ceiling.
Some had been gutted open.
Some had their necks twisted off.
Some had their bodies contorted into a spiral.
Black blood seeped out from the base of the Corpse Mound, pooling on the floor into a small, dark lake.
And at the very top of the Corpse Mound, a ghost nurse barely clinging to half a breath was trembling, reaching a hand toward it.
Those eyes were filled with desperate terror.
"Run... away..."
The ghost nurse's mouth opened and closed, producing a faint sound.
"There's... a monster..."
The words fell, and that outstretched hand dropped limply.
It never moved again.
The Plague Ghost stood there in a daze.
Staring at the Corpse Mound. Staring at the dead ghost nurse.
Then, instinctively, it touched its thigh.
Wet.
It looked at its own hand.
A clear liquid soaked its palm.
"Hah... so it's urine."
The Plague Ghost exhaled, laughed with relief.
"I knew it—it's just a Corpse Mound. How could I, a distinguished S-Grade Plague Ghost, ever break into a cold sweat over something like this?"
Its trembling hand reached down and picked up the object that had rolled to its feet.
It was the severed head of a Ghost Doctor.
The head hadn't even had time to close its eyes—the face still bore the expression of someone who had witnessed something utterly terrifying.
"Ha... ha-ha, is that all! Putting on a haunted show!"
The Plague Ghost maintained a calm facade on the surface while, in reality, its heart was in complete chaos.
It stood up, putting on a brave front as it let out a strange cry.
"Gah! Come out! Let me see who's playing games!"
However, the instant that cry left its mouth!
It felt it.
A killing intent.
Coming from directly above.
The Plague Ghost's neck tilted up, inch by inch.
On the ceiling of the corridor, someone had appeared at some point.
No—not someone.
It was a creature clad in black-and-crimson armor, hanging upside down from the ceiling.
A pair of Crimson Pupils looked down at it from above.
Those pupils held no anger, no killing intent—not even any emotion at all.
Only a single kind of gaze...
The gaze one gives an ant.
And beside that creature, a lantern floated.
A lantern radiating a sacred black light.
Just looking at it was enough to feel its boundless Grand Love.
The Plague Ghost's pupils contracted sharply.
It opened its mouth, wanting to scream, wanting to beg for mercy, wanting to flee.
But the next second!
Those Crimson Pupils—moved.
BOOM!!!
A figure descended from above!
The Plague Ghost only managed to catch a flash of black-and-crimson light, and then—
"Ahhhhh!!!"
A scream rang out again through the cross-shaped corridor!
But it lasted only half a second before cutting off abruptly.
Exactly the same as before.
The corridor sank back into dead silence.
Only a lantern radiating black light floated in midair, its body trembling faintly...