Chapter 3355

"Did you say before that you were going to perform a kidney removal surgery?" Schiller has one hand on the lever of the passage, looking at Strange and saying.

"I said that this place does not have the conditions to perform organ removal surgery." Although he has already guessed what Schiller intends to do, Strange still says out of his professional instinct, "Removing organs is actually not difficult; even non-professionals can do it. What's difficult is ensuring the patient survives and ensuring the activity of the removed organ."

"In other words, it can be removed?"

"Yes, if you don't consider the survival rate, there is absolutely no problem."

Schiller thinks for a while and then says: "Then what if it's not a human organ? Can it be ensured to be removed completely?"

"Not a big problem." Strange says, "Even if I don't understand their body structure at all, there is no delicate operation I cannot do. Removal is definitely no problem."

Schiller touches his chin and says: "On the first day, our patients were basically civilians, and they didn't seem to have any special identities, but later a civilian hero came here, and then immediately after that were Stark and the raven-man."

"This means that the patients we encounter later may have increasingly bigger backgrounds and won't be so easy to fool. Stark has a gun in his hand, so others may not necessarily lack weapons or superpowers. It's not that simple to kill them to silence them."

"Are you trying to take something from their bodies while ensuring they survive?" Strange taps the edge of the hospital bed lightly and says, "But if they leave the hospital and feel physical discomfort, and go to other places for examinations, they might also find out."

"Then don't give them a chance to go to other places for examinations." Schiller says, "To ensure they don't find out, they will eventually have to die, but they cannot die here. Otherwise, it might affect the hospital's reputation, leading to no one coming here for treatment."

Strange nods and says: "That's right. Although there is no quantitative standard, I guess the reputation value should still exist. The previous few patients counted as a novice tutorial, and it didn't matter if they were treated to death. But starting from the plot character Nova, the success rate of treatment has become important."

"The good news is that we haven't treated too many people to death since then." Schiller continues, "At least Stark left alive, which should have also increased some reputation value for us."

"The game has been guiding us to balance income and reputation well; we can take patients' organs to sell for money. But if too many people die, we won't be able to receive more patients."

"And the plot in the dream world has been progressing, requiring us to find a solution as soon as possible. So the exploration of the real world cannot stop, and we must receive more patients to figure out what exactly is going on."

"But we cannot be led by the nose by him."

Schiller licks his teeth with his tongue again. The tooth he is missing is the last one on the right side except for the wisdom tooth; although it does not affect speaking and chewing for the time being, if this continues, the damage will definitely become more and more serious.

"What do you plan to do?"

"Still the same sentence, people can die, but they cannot die here. It's best if they die shortly after returning home, so they won't go to check what organs they have lost."

"There are police in this world." Strange reminds, "If their cause of death is too similar, it will definitely attract the attention of the police. If the police find out that they have all been to the same hospital recently, then the risk of us being exposed is very high."

"Then don't make their cause of death too similar." Schiller's fingertips tap lightly on the top of the lever, and he says, "There are over 1000 different plagues here."

Strange breathes in lightly and says: "Are you trying to extract plague samples from patients and then transplant them to other patients to control their time of death?"

"That's right." Schiller grins and says, "Among all the disease types we can learn about, there are about 200 kinds where the time from infection to onset is very precise. Once we encounter this kind of disease among patients, we can find a way to preserve the virus samples."

"This way, when we encounter patients with valuable organs, we can first remove the organs through surgery, and then let the patient be infected with a plague with a controllable time, to ensure that they will fall ill and die shortly after returning home, so it can't be traced back to us."

"Then what about the police?"

"Even if the police chase us, we can use excuses like substandard hygiene conditions, cross-infection, etc., to brush them off. After all, what else can you expect from a hospital in this era?"

"What if they perform an autopsy and find missing organs?"

"Among the 200+ diseases with controllable onset times, there are also more than 60 diseases that will bring devastating physical damage. For example, acute ore disease; about 8 hours after infection, the patient will completely turn into an ore cluster. Such a corpse cannot be checked for organs."

"Moreover, many diseases are contagious. Although I don't know how this world deals with disease transmission, it's probably just those tricks. Killing the infected person immediately and cremating them must be the optimal treatment method. No daring forensic doctor will dare to perform an autopsy on a plague patient."

"How do you plan to preserve the virus samples? And how to make them infected without the patient finding out?"

"Many diseases have signs before they fully break out." Schiller speaks again, "This is the underlying setting of this game, otherwise we wouldn't be able to check what disease the patient has."

"Yes. But these signs usually take some time to appear. There are no symptoms when just infected. How are we going to convince the patient to wait here until we can observe the symptoms?"

Schiller seems to have anticipated this long ago. He smiles, taps the tool tray next to him, and says: "This is the key. I just bought normal anesthesia from the bear orderly. This thing is based on some magical principle, and the effect is almost the same as modern anesthetic preparations."

Strange immediately understands Schiller's idea and says: "Are you planning to use this professional anesthetic to help patients skip the initial infection period?"

"That's right. And we can completely control the time they will fall ill after going out by controlling the dosage of the anesthetic."

"Let's take ore disease as an example. The onset time of acute ore disease is about 8 hours, and the initial symptoms will appear about two hours after infection."

"Then we only need to anesthetize the patient for two hours to confirm whether he is infected. If we let him go at this time, he will fall ill six hours later."

"But if we anesthetize him for seven hours, then he will fall ill within one hour after leaving, or even seven and a half hours, or seven hours and fifty minutes; at that time he definitely hasn't arrived home yet, and there is a high probability he will fall ill on the street."

"What benefit does this have for us?"

"Of course, what if we can precisely control the time to seven hours and fifty-nine minutes? When we stuff the patient back through the passage, he only has a few dozen seconds of onset time left. Then who will be the unlucky one?"

Strange also reveals a smile.

Schiller looks back at the hospital bed behind him and says: "I guess that as the plot progresses, someone will come to help us improve and expand the ward. At that time, passages will also appear above these two beds, and we will be busy between all kinds of patients with strange diseases, striving to improve the cure rate, earn money, and push the plot forward."

"But we actually don't need to spend money to expand the passage at all. The remaining two hospital beds can be used to place anesthetized patients. This can greatly reduce our workload, and at the same time, the speed of improving reputation and earning money won't be slow."

"The only problem is..."

"A bit wicked, yes, but are you doing it?"

"Screw it, let's do it."

"Click." The metal lever is pulled down. The rustling sound starts again, and with a "bang," a figure falls onto the operating table. Two slender black shadows stand on the left and right, like death gods gradually approaching.

The one that falls onto the operating table again is a green-skinned figure, short in stature, with short limbs, but with large palms. The facial features are wrinkled, and there are many tree-bark-like patterns on the skin surface.

This thing that looks like a small tree spirit also falls in a mess when it drops down. Schiller has already discovered that none of the patients who come here are conscious, which might also be a convenience provided by the game system.

After about a few seconds, the little tree spirit wakes up in a daze. As soon as he wakes up, Schiller sees his pair of eyes that look like golden gems.

When Schiller looks at Strange, Strange happens to look up at him. The two people's gazes meet for a second, and then they separate to do their own things.

About ten minutes later, Schiller puts the two golden gems into a glass jar. Strange starts to peel off the tree-bark-like existence on the skin and says: "Limb atrophy disease shouldn't be what you want, right?"

"Yes, the onset time of this disease is too long, and the lethality is too low. It's just relatively easy to spread."

"How to deal with it?"

Schiller puts down the glass jar and says: "The firewood in the fireplace is a bit insufficient. Fill it in. I want to know what treasure the fireplace will give us."

Strange immediately understands that Schiller should have some guesses about the fireplace and is now trying to verify them.

Schiller, who puts down the glass jar, walks to the operating table and drags the tree spirit, which has no movement, down and throws it near the fireplace. Because the body size is relatively small, Schiller throws it directly into the fireplace as a whole.

The fireplace flame flashes, and the tree spirit's body is soon burned to ashes. The "gurgle-gurgle" sound comes from the chimney again, just like some kind of terrible giant beast is vomiting.

"Snap!"

Something else falls into the flames first, then falls to the ground. Schiller walks over to pick it up and take a look, and finds that it is actually a toenail.

Strange also walks over. He seems a bit disgusted, puts on gloves before taking the nail over, then shakes his head and says: "I am very sure, this is not my toenail. And what I lost was the big toe. This piece is too small, it can't be a big toe nail no matter what."

Schiller is thoughtful, then he walks quickly to the shelf and takes out the tooth placed in the glass jar.

After observing the structure of the tooth, he finds that this tooth is also not the tooth he lost. From the structure and wear of the tooth, this should be the second premolar, which is the third-to-last tooth except for the wisdom tooth, while Schiller lost the last one.

"Do you think this thing can be brought into the dream?" Strange says his speculation and says, "Replace us to bear a punishment? Is that what it means?"

"Very likely." Schiller says, "This should be a prop to help us delay the progression of the dream plot."

"What if we don't sleep?" Strange asks with a frown, "There doesn't seem to be a rule here that forces sleep, right?"

"I guess, if we don't sleep for a long time, some other situations will happen." Schiller clearly understands the game's design better and says, "The consequences might be much more serious than losing a tooth."

Strange sighs lightly and says: "It seems we still have to figure out what exactly happened in the dream, why the two children we control are being tortured?"

(End of chapter)