Chapter 183: The Surface and Inner Worlds of Sunshine Sanatorium (Patreon)

"Clang— clang— clang—"

The wall clock's hands, after spinning backward in a frenzy, stopped at twelve.

Then the bell rang, striking twelve times in a row.

The sound echoed through the entire sanatorium, carrying an ominous weight.

As the final toll faded, the whole world began to "peel away."

The warm pink wallpaper curled and flaked off in huge sheets, exposing the raw, bloody wall beneath.

That wall seemed almost alive — dark red blood vessels crisscrossed it, fascia twitched, and thick fluid oozed continuously from the cracks.

The hallway lights flickered violently, then flashed into an eerie blood-crimson.

The surface world faded. The true world had arrived.

The real face of Sunshine Sanatorium revealed itself.

"Roar!"

Terrifying howls echoed through the corridor.

The faceless nurses, once slow and seemingly harmless, began swelling rapidly under the crimson light.

Their patient gowns tore apart as their bodies ballooned to nearly twice their former size.

The items in their hands changed too — no longer medicine, but chainsaws crackling with sparks, barbed chains, and massive syringes long enough to pierce a human skull with ease!

"Fzzt... fzzt..."

Static crackled through the sanatorium's intercom.

Then a voice boomed into every corner.

"Night...... has...... come......"

"All...... children...... not yet...... asleep......"

"Shall be...... removed......"

Was that the director?

Shido Makoto's heart sank.

He realized at once — the rules of the true world and the surface world were completely different.

In the surface world, a symptomatic breakdown was an automatic pardon from death.

But in the true world there were no rules, no judgments — only slaughter.

"Roar!"

A savage howl erupted right outside his room's door.

A nurse that had just finished mutating had already locked onto him — the "bad child who wouldn't sleep."

Its body was monstrously huge, nearly blocking the entire corridor.

The grotesque stitched-on smile was still on its face, but where the mouth should have been, a massive gash had torn open.

Its right arm had already become a chainsaw, spinning at high speed!

"Boom!"

The mutated nurse didn't bother with the door — it simply kicked, and the iron door of the ward shattered instantly.

Shards of metal sprayed in every direction.

Shido Makoto's body went rigid with tension.

In that split-second of crisis, Ruan Luo stirred behind him.

Under the thick reek of blood in the true world, the effect of the red pill in her system seemed to have been forcibly broken through.

In her once-dazed, docile eyes, the false sense of happiness shattered piece by piece.

She had woken up.

"Roar!"

The mutated nurse gave them no time to breathe. With a roar, it raised the chainsaw high overhead.

The buzzing blade came slashing straight down toward Shido Makoto's skull!

The chainsaw's roar was deafening.

In the instant before the teeth touched his scalp, Shido Makoto's body twisted sideways at an angle beyond human limits, rolling clear.

Boom!

The chainsaw slammed down exactly where he'd been standing, splitting the iron-framed bed and mattress behind him clean in half!

That was close.

Shido Makoto sprang up off the ground in one motion, cold sweat breaking out across his back.

This monster's strength and speed far exceeded anything he'd imagined.

Without hesitation, he pulled from his pocket the scalpel he'd seized earlier from Dr. Smile — the very one the doctor had stabbed into his shoulder.

He circled to the mutated nurse's flank, and in the brief instant of rigidity after its missed strike, he drove the scalpel with all his strength into its exposed waist!

Squelch.

The scalpel sank in.

But Shido Makoto's expression changed.

The feel wasn't like piercing flesh — it was more like stabbing into an unbelievably tough hide.

The blade sank in barely a centimeter before muscle and fascia clamped down hard, unable to do any real damage.

Its physical defense had to be extremely high!

"Roar!"

The mutated nurse let out a furious howl of pain.

It spun around, its one remaining good arm sweeping toward Shido Makoto's chest with overwhelming force.

If that slap landed square, it would crush his ribcage entirely.

At that moment, a figure shot past Shido Makoto from behind.

"You're dead!"

A furious roar tore from Ruan Luo's throat.

Fully freed from the drug's control, Ruan Luo had entered a berserk state.

Her eyes blazed red, every muscle in her body coiled with explosive power.

Like a cannonball fired from its barrel, she charged straight into the incoming arm without a flicker of hesitation.

"Ruan Luo?!"

Shido Makoto was stunned — he hadn't expected her to be this reckless.

But it was too late to stop her; all he could do was watch as her slender-looking body collided head-on with that arm, thick as a stone pillar.

Yet what happened next caught Shido Makoto completely off guard.

Ruan Luo wasn't sent flying.

In the instant of impact, she dropped low and scrambled straight up along the arm!

"Go for the legs!"

Shido Makoto immediately spotted the monster's weakness — its upper body attacks were wide and sweeping, but its lower body was comparatively clumsy and slow to move.

Even as he shouted the warning, he was already yanking the [Silent Pocket Watch] from his pocket.

"Use this!"

He pressed the pocket watch's switch and hurled it toward Ruan Luo.

Hmmm—

An invisible field of force spread outward.

Within a ten-meter radius centered on Ruan Luo, every sound vanished in an instant!

The chainsaw's roar, the monster's howls, Shido Makoto's shouting — all of it disappeared.

Ruan Luo, already perched on the nurse's shoulder, caught the pocket watch.

She understood Shido Makoto's intention immediately.

Shielded by absolute silence, every one of her movements became utterly soundless.

She slid down off the nurse's back and appeared instantly in the creature's blind spot.

She poured every ounce of her strength into her right leg.

A blindingly fast sliding kick!

Crack!

The ten seconds of silence had run out, and the sound of shattering bone rang out the very instant the silence field dissolved.

The kneecap supporting the mutated nurse's massive frame was shattered by Ruan Luo's kick, driven brutally in the wrong direction.

"Roar!"

The mutated nurse let out a wail of agony as its colossal body lost balance and collapsed onto one knee.

Now!

Ruan Luo gave it no chance to recover.

The instant the creature went down, she leaped again onto its back, her arms locking around its chainsaw-wielding right arm like a pair of iron pincers.

"Break! For! Me!"

A low growl tore from Ruan Luo's throat as every muscle in her body bulged, veins standing out along her arms.

Crack! Crack-crack!

Amid a series of skin-crawling bone-cracking sounds,

that arm — thicker than her own thigh — was torn clean off at the shoulder by sheer brute force!

Dark green blood sprayed outward in a burst!

"ROOOAAAR!"

The monster let out the most horrific scream it had ever made.

But Ruan Luo's assault wasn't finished.

She snatched up the still-buzzing chainsaw and reversed her grip on it.

Under the crimson light, her small, delicate figure stood in eerie contrast to the chainsaw in her hands.

"Die."

She aimed the spinning blade at the creature's massive head and dragged it straight down, top to bottom, all the way through!

Splat!!

From the skull, through the chest cavity, down to the abdomen...

The mutated nurse's massive body was sliced cleanly in two.

Organs, shredded flesh, and dark green blood splattered across the floor.

Standing some distance away, Shido Makoto watched Ruan Luo — bathed in a rain of blood, chainsaw in hand, looking like some kind of war goddess — and only one thought filled his mind.

The monsters of the true world were terrifying, but as long as you had enough firepower, they could be killed.

The mutated nurse's corpse twitched a few times on the ground, then rapidly dissolved into a pool of blood.

At the center of that pool, something slowly floated to the surface.

It was a key.

Carved into the top of the key was the character "3."

The key to the third floor.