Chapter 85: Saint Hilarius Hospital (17)
There is a certain smell to clean death—the kind caused by a swift bullet or a sharp blade; a faint scent of gunpowder or fresh blood scattering in the air for a few seconds.
And there is the smell of rotten death, where bodies are left to decompose under the sun.
But on the second basement floor (B2) of Saint Hilarius Hospital, the smell belonged to neither.
It was the smell of "life slowly being drained."
The air was heavy, sticky, and nauseatingly warm, as if you were breathing inside the lung of a sick living creature.
The dominant scent was that of copper and rusted iron, thick and concentrated to the point that anyone inhaling it felt as though they were swallowing old coins soaked in saltwater and pus.
In the middle of this nightmarish atmosphere, a portion of the shattered steel elevator cabin had fallen after splitting apart in the shaft, coming to rest atop a thick metal mesh suspended in the void.
The impact had crushed and completely deformed the steel, but "Damian Ivaris" had assumed a fully defensive posture mid-air before the collision.
Beneath the twisted wreckage, Damian’s heavy armor stirred.
The blond young man, built like a siege tank, pushed away a steel slab weighing hundreds of kilograms with his armored hands, shoving it aside with a screeching metallic grind that tore at the eardrums, sparks flying from the friction of metal against metal.
Damian was breathing heavily, his breaths emerging as small white clouds in the humid air.
His tactical armor was scratched and pierced with metal fragments, and blood trickled from a superficial wound on his forehead, covering his left eye—but he was alive.
And in his arms, protected by his massive body and a faint electromagnetic shield that had absorbed most of the impact, lay "Sia Novilth."
Sia slowly opened her blue eyes, blinking to adjust to the dim red lighting.
Her angelic face and blonde hair, speckled with drops of blood and dust, stood in stark contrast to the surrounding environment.
She showed no hysterical fear.
Instead, she lightly brushed the dust off her face, and with a calm motion that carried an unsettling coldness, she leaned on Damian’s arm to stand.
"Are you alright, Sia? Any internal fractures?" Damian asked in his rough, booming voice, his eyes scanning their surroundings with military caution.
"I’m an A-rank healer, Damian. Even if my ribs were broken, I could mend them in seconds. Your armor, as always, did its job," Sia replied in her soft voice, like poisoned silk, as she drew her twin daggers from their sheaths around her thighs.
"But... where are we? This place lacks architectural taste, and it reeks of something that makes me want to skin someone’s nose."
The two stood on the broken metal mesh and looked around.
For a few seconds, even for elite intelligence operatives who had seen the worst of the underworld, their blood ran cold, and their pupils dilated in shock that paralyzed their thoughts.
They were not in an ordinary room.
They were in a massive artificial "cavern," its ceiling rising dozens of meters high, its rocky walls covered with countless plastic and metal pipes.
The lighting was a dim crimson, emanating from emergency lamps coated in layers of filth and dried blood.
But the ground... there was no solid ground.
The metal mesh walkway they stood on stretched like a long, intersecting suspension bridge over a "lake."
A vast lake, its end unseen in the red darkness, spanning an area equal to several football fields.
And it was not a lake of water, nor of transparent chemicals.
It was a lake of pure human blood.
The blood was thick, viscous, bubbling slowly as if simmering over low heat—or as if it were breathing.
Gentle waves of dense blood lapped against the massive concrete pillars supporting the walkway, producing a wet, revolting sound (shlap... shlap...) that echoed through the cavern, forming a nightmarish rhythm.
But the absolute horror—the kind that makes you renounce your own humanity—was not in the lake itself, but in its source.
Damian and Sia raised their gazes toward the dimly lit ceiling.
Hundreds... no, thousands of human bodies were hanging by their ankles, suspended upside down in precise, industrial production lines resembling those of large-scale cattle slaughterhouses.
But they were not corpses.
They were alive.
Men, women, elderly, and young—all completely naked.
Their bodies were pale as dead snow, their ribcages protruding from extreme emaciation and malnutrition.
From their necks—specifically the carotid arteries—and from the bases of their skulls, thick transparent plastic tubes were embedded.
These tubes pumped warm blood and spinal marrow—pure vital Eitra—from their living bodies drop by drop, feeding into massive main pipes hanging from the ceiling like pulsating black intestines, which in turn poured their contents as small waterfalls into the crimson lake below.
To keep them alive for as long as possible, other smaller tubes were implanted directly into their chests and veins, pumping a faintly glowing yellow chemical fluid that forced their hearts to keep beating, compelled their bone marrow to produce more blood, and prevented them from bleeding out too quickly.
The suspended patients were fully conscious.
Their eyes were open, rolling in their sockets with silent, endless terror.
Their throats had been surgically removed and stitched shut with thick sutures so they could not scream and disturb those running the farm.
They could only moan through their noses—a collective, faint, continuous sound that blended with the dripping of blood, forming a symphony of agony that no human mind with even a shred of conscience could endure.
"Blood farms..." Damian whispered, his grip tightening around the handle of his heavy machine gun until the metal nearly cracked, his lips trembling with pure, righteous anger.
"I’ve read... I’ve read about the legends of those responsible for these operations—that they require human blood and pure Eitra to fuel their powers and extend their corrupted lifespans... but I thought it was exaggeration. I never imagined... they built a slaughterhouse and a farm of this monstrous scale beneath a public hospital that claims to treat the poor."
"What exquisite, pathological architecture," Sia said.
Her voice carried no fear, only an analytical coldness hiding a quiet anger like the surface of a frozen ocean.
Her blue eyes widened with tactical fascination. "Thousands of humans being milked like cattle every day. Saint Hilarius possesses an excellent economic mindset in managing human resources. Blood for Eitra, and flesh for the chimeras we saw in the reports. Nothing goes to waste."
Damian looked at her. He knew Sia appeared sadistic and cold—but he also knew she was a doctor and a healer, and what she was witnessing now was the ultimate desecration of medicine.