Chapter 3389

When Schiller rushed to the entrance of the passage, Loki, who was on the night shift, was listening to the movement at the entrance. He pointed to the operating room where Stark was and said, "That should be where the trouble is. Could it be that some equipment exploded again?"

"This isn't the kind of movement an equipment explosion could make." Schiller looked at Manny with a serious expression. Manny shook her head at him.

Soon, a figure floating in the air drilled out from another pipe. Henry floated in front of everyone and said, "You've caused a huge disaster; you've drilled open the cage of that big guy underneath."

He clearly knew many things and chose to hide the truth, but Schiller didn't have time to argue with him. He first had to ensure the safety of Batman and Stark, because these two were the biggest spenders most likely to buy the hospital. Secondly, he had to protect this hospital; if it were dismantled by something, his plan would be ruined.

At this time, Thor waved others away and said, "I'll go over and check the situation first; if there's no danger, I'll call you."

When Thor drilled into the passage, Seeing Natasha and Arkham Batman also arrived. Seeing Natasha glanced into the passage, shook her head, and said, "You should have waited for us to come over. That big guy might not be able to adapt to such complex terrain; after all, he used to fly..."

"It's okay, Thor often falls into gravity traps because he doesn't look where he's going, so he has rich experience in this regard."

"Are you sure he fell in because he didn't look where he was going?" Schiller looked at Loki with some doubt. And Loki looked away.

Soon, Thor's voice came from that side, saying, "The operating room collapsed halfway, but the landing spot is fine; you can come over."

Several people slid along the passage one after another. After landing, Schiller looked at the huge pit in surprise. The parts of the drilling rig were scattered aside, as if they had been slapped apart by something. Batman and Stark were also nowhere to be seen.

Schiller turned to look at the mecha rack that had been placed directly opposite the passage before, and found it was gone. He breathed a sigh of relief, which meant Stark had gone down wearing the equipment, proving they had been prepared.

"What on earth are they doing?" Schiller couldn't help but complain again, "They discovered an abnormality and didn't call anyone, insisting on going down to explore themselves; Batman would actually follow Tony in such nonsense."

Seeing Natasha walked to the edge of the big pit, knelt down halfway, reached out and pinched a bit of powder, then said, "This stuff looks similar to the slag we encountered deep in the mine, much wetter than the surface. This proves that something has come out from the ground. The two of them might have been taken down."

Schiller's heart hung up again. He glanced at Arkham Batman, and Arkham Batman said, "I can go down with Seeing Natasha and take a look."

After saying this, he took out a grappling hook, gloves, and a gun. Seeing Natasha waved her hand and added a slow-fall spell to herself. The two went down into the deep pit together.

Schiller remembered what they had said before, that there was a passage direction at the bottom of the mine that pointed exactly to the hospital. It seemed the correct route should have been to explore the mine first and find the road leading to the hospital's underground on that path.

As it turned out, because of their excessive mining, they had drilled straight through. No matter what was underneath, it should have been just as surprised as they were.

It wasn't that Schiller and the others didn't want to go down; the key was that they were all ordinary people now. Not to mention fighting monsters, he and Strange could barely jump to the bottom of the deep pit without injury, so it was better not to add to the chaos.

Schiller wasn't interested in fighting either; he preferred to solve the problem from another direction. He returned to the hospital lobby along the passage, sat at the counter, and asked Manny, "What's underground?"

"Another me."

Not a very unexpected answer. Schiller thought, the little girl in front of him had some resentment, but not much, and overall she still looked relatively rational. The scenes he created in his dreams and the state of the mummified corpses were more like hoping someone could understand the truth.

But if things were as he said, many years ago, various forces sacrificed a little girl in an extremely evil way to mine the underground magic energy, then her resentment must be very terrifying and not so easy to deal with.

"What exactly is going on?" Schiller asked.

"They drained my blood." Manny said.

"I already know this." Schiller nodded. On the night he had a long talk with Manny, he already knew. The way that group of people divided the energy through this little girl was to let her absorb magic power, and then they would drain her blood and refine it into medicine to drink. So the little girl seen in the dream showed a kind of weakness from excessive blood loss.

"They didn't just want one energy source, but wanted everything." Manny said.

"They wanted your special constitution?" Schiller asked with a frown. He had this conjecture before; after all, if one had a constitution that could directly contact the source of magic energy, then all the magic energy sources in the world would become something in their pocket.

Manny nodded and said, "They asked me, they tortured me. I didn't know what to do."

Schiller thought for a while and said, "So they pulled out your teeth and nails to interrogate you. And because you didn't know what was going on and couldn't answer them, they were so ashamed and angry that they cut off your tongue."

Manny nodded.

"They sacrificed me." Manny said, "Hoping I would become the new source."

Manny's way of speaking was too concise; Schiller could only guess for himself, then asked her, "Did they sacrifice you back then because of your special constitution? What's the benefit of doing this?"

"I can absorb energy."

"Yes, I know... you mean, you can not only absorb the energy of the magic source, but also absorb other things?"

Manny nodded.

Schiller gradually understood and said, "They wanted you to absorb souls, so they created the plague. The energy in the souls of all the people who died here would be absorbed by you, who had become a monster, and then they would extract this energy in another way."

Manny shook her head again and said, "Not extract."

"Not extract?" Schiller fell into deep thought and said, "Are they cultivating a monster? What do they want to do with that you underground?"

"War." Manny said.

This Schiller didn't quite understand. Why would these people think of fighting a war when they were doing fine?

He felt there should be some historical origins here, so he went to find Loki again. Loki was comforting patients with Wanda; hearing Schiller's question, he thought for a while and said:

"It might be because the Duchy of Westchester is a buffer zone between the two major empires. The reason it can exist is that the two sides don't want to border each other. But if the two sides want to start a war, the first to be destroyed would be the Duchy of Westchester."

"As far as I know, both major empires have powerful war machines. The empire leaning toward technology has the Steam Throne, and the empire leaning toward magic has forbidden spells, while Westchester has nothing."

"So that thing underground was created by the nobles of Westchester for self-protection? If they had this ability, would they still be a punching bag?"

Schiller thought about it and felt it wasn't quite right. This thing might not have been created by the Duchy of Westchester, but could be a trap buried here by one of the two major empires.

This could effectively prevent the other side from raiding Westchester and catching them off guard with a blitzkrieg.

If this explanation was more complex, it could be analogized to burying a trap that could explode at any time under Poland to prevent a blitzkrieg on Poland, interrupting the opponent's offensive rhythm.

Schiller didn't care which side buried the trap; he only knew that this trap was built under his hospital. If anything happened, his assets would be the first to suffer.

"Eradicate! Must eradicate!"

But there was still no prompt that the task was completed; it seemed he and Strange had to figure out how the plague broke out themselves.

Schiller found Strange again and found that he could still endure his temper to perform surgery. It could only be said that surgeons weren't without merit; even if the sky fell, it wouldn't delay them from performing surgery.

"I think we need to go down." Schiller said, "It seems that if we don't face the source of the plague directly, the task won't be considered complete. And there is that unknown choice; only after making it will it be considered cleared."

Strange finished his movements unhurriedly and said, "First, I don't have magic. Second, you don't have a symbiote either. Are you sure the two of us can successfully clear the level?"

"We have to try no matter what." Schiller shrugged and said, "After all, we chose a dungeon with ability restrictions, so it shouldn't be particularly difficult. If it really doesn't work, we can find them for help."

Strange wiped his hands clean, packed his tools, and said, "When do you plan to set off?"

"Right now. Everything is ready; if we are lucky, we might even run into Batman."

Strange nodded and came to the original operating room with Schiller, where he met Pride.

"Batman left it for me." Pride handed Schiller a metal box with a button on the back and said, "This thing seems to be able to contact him. If there's any problem, just press it."

"Would you be so kind?" Schiller narrowed his eyes and looked at him, saying, "This wouldn't be a bomb, would it?"

"If you don't want it, forget it." After saying this, Pride was about to put the box away, and then it was snatched away by Schiller.

He waved his hand and said, "If we successfully clear the level, we shouldn't be coming back up. I will leave the key to the drawer with money and the key to the front door to the lucky winner who wins the bid. Remember to send me a message after you clear the level."

After saying this, Schiller brought a coil of rope from the side. He and Strange could only adopt this more troublesome way to go down.

Neither of them was very good at rappelling; fortunately, when Seeing Natasha and Arkham Batman went down before, they left a light source at the bottom. It could be seen that the pit wasn't that deep, only a few meters away, so they grabbed the rope and slowly descended.

After Schiller landed, he felt the ground was uneven and guessed it should have been blown up by something. When Strange landed, he almost twisted his foot and couldn't help but complain, "No magic is really inconvenient."

"Yeah, it's a pity that witches can't be male." Schiller shook his head and said.

The two held torches and walked forward one after another. Below was clearly a mine tunnel dug by hand, and it looked like it had been there for some years, reminding Schiller of the underground cave in the Faraines dungeon before.

"Do you know I went to participate in a dungeon where we threw dice before?" Schiller's voice echoed in the empty mine tunnel.

"What?"

"That game was quite interesting. Most of the plot was written by us, and then fused together by the God of Stories. The game's exploration and combat methods were all throwing dice, with strong randomness..."

Schiller talked about their experience in this dungeon, especially mentioning the agent's clean and neat shot. Schiller's complaints dispersed the oppressive atmosphere in the mine tunnel. Soon, a faint light appeared in front of the road.

(End of chapter)