Players, Please Board the Train

Bai Kou was absolutely right. When Xu Huo brought out this dungeon, he never intended to leave empty-handed. With high-level players present, if they didn’t want to clear the instance through normal means, he couldn’t force them to. And those people most likely wouldn’t clear it through the standard channels anyway; the most probable outcome for the dungeon was destruction.

Since it was a one-time use, of course he had to make the most of it.

He glanced at Bai Kou. ”Even a horse needs to eat grass to run. The person you mentioned is a B-rank player, right? I’ve seen his item before, but I still don’t know what his characteristics are. I can’t go to kill someone with nothing but my bare hands. If I fail, that would be a headache for you too.”

Bai Kou didn’t say much more. ”This is your turf, you figure it out. If you can’t even kill a B-rank player, how can you possibly inherit Uncle Fan Xiao’s ancient castle?”

”Right, I also think District 011 is too dangerous. The castle is better off with you. I’ll just leave,” Xu Huo said to her with sincere earnestness.

Bai Kou rolled her eyes. ”Hugo’s profession is a black-market doctor. He has two powerful characteristics. One allows him to transform objects into scalpels anytime, anywhere, limited to smaller items, living creatures excluded. The second is that his hands carry an infectious disease. Touching a person or object can transmit this illness. Direct contact or touching a contaminated object will quickly lead to infection and severe symptoms.”

”Can a protective suit prevent it?” Xu Huo asked.

”Only a B-grade protective suit can block it completely. But if you’re in close combat, can you guarantee you won’t get injured?” Bai Kou countered.

Xu Huo did have protective suits on hand; much of the equipment he obtained from Jiang Feng was top-notch. But as Bai Kou said, he didn’t have the strength to engage a B-rank player in close combat and come out completely unscathed.

However, relying solely on ranged attacks, he might not even be able to hold Hugo back.”You’re not without advantages either,” Bai Kou said. ”This is your dungeon, and it happens to be a mental-type one. As long as he lacks the ability to break the dungeon, he will be affected by it.”

”Isn’t this your dungeon too?” Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. The automatically generated stairs beneath his feet carried him back downstairs, and the floor that had opened like an automatic door swiftly closed again after he vanished.

”Playing quite smoothly, aren’t you?” Bai Kou smiled. After cleaning the blood off herself, she tapped the sphere again. Some of the small black dots originally moving on the sphere were now isolated by surging black particles. Simultaneously, changes occurred within the Seventeenth Hospital.

Originally, the dungeon location was just a relatively large hospital, with an observation deck included, totaling six floors. While it could undergo some changes according to Xu Huo’s adjustments, its primary effect was mental influence on the players who entered. In other words, the building physically existed. If someone unknowingly punched through the hospital walls, there was nothing to be done about it.

But Bai Kou, using some unknown method, had actually covered the hospital walls with a layer of metal plating, complete with her signature metal-chain portals. She also modified the hospital’s layout using her own Mental World, truly isolating Hugo as promised.

For a moment, Xu Huo suspected she was hiding her true strength. But the next second, he no longer had the mental bandwidth for that thought, because Bai Kou directly delivered Hugo right in front of him.

Previously, Bai Kou killing Jiang Feng had made Hugo pay a bit of attention to Xu Huo. Just moments ago, he had been with Whale, but now he was suddenly somewhere else, bumping right into him. The frustration of failing to kill Bai Kou and complete the transaction instantly erupted, all directed at the person before him.

He casually stomped his foot on the ground, raised his hand, and swept it out. The scattered debris instantly transformed into sharp projectiles, spraying towards Xu Huo.

Xu Huo naturally wouldn’t just wait to die. And it wasn’t yet time for a real confrontation. He turned and sprinted towards a newly appeared corridor on the left. After he entered, countless monsters conjured from human fantasies surged out from the corridor, swarming to surround Hugo.

The projectile spray was useless against these monsters. Hugo pinched a very small scalpel and swept it through the air. Those grotesquely bizarre-looking monsters were sliced in half.

Of course, the vitality of these monsters couldn’t be judged by normal logic, especially a few ghostly creatures that looked very human. After being severed, they actually flew up, trailing a tangle of internal organs, and could even use them as ropes to entangle Hugo repeatedly.

The man in the floral shirt and beach pants grew thoroughly annoyed. He slapped his right hand against an object attached to him. A blackish-grey substance, resembling mold, rapidly spread. It also seemed like tiny fly-like insects multiplying quickly, soon corroding all those monsters into nothingness.

Two characteristics witnessed. However, Xu Huo didn’t go back. Instead, he altered the hospital’s layout, sending more fantastical creations towards Hugo, and even conjured a blood mutant according to his own imagination.

Previously, Hugo hadn’t paid the monsters much mind; it was just a matter of spending some time. Mental constructs couldn’t truly harm him. But after the blood mutant appeared, his expression shifted slightly. The reason was simple: some high-level players kept Mutants as their enforcers, a trend popular in Platinum Eye.

But he wasn’t certain if the blood mutant before him was real. Therefore, his first action after shaking off the surrounding monsters was to test its authenticity—using his characteristic to transform the scattered objects around him and pin it to the wall!

”Roooar!” The injured blood mutant let out a furious roar, completely ignoring the ”scalpels” embedded in its body. It forcefully struggled free and, without a moment’s pause, charged at Hugo.

From a distance, Hugo swung out a scalpel. Unexpectedly, the blood mutant was extremely agile, dodging his attack. It rebounded off the ceiling and lunged down, aiming to cover Hugo’s face!

Hugo used the ”scalpel” attack again, but with minimal effect. Affected by the dungeon, he didn’t have a clear grasp of the hospital building’s actual situation. However, walls he could previously crush now couldn’t be broken at will. With not many usable objects around, this attack failed to repel the blood mutant, only grazing its surface.

But this wasn’t a major problem either. He used an item to relocate, appearing in the corridor Xu Huo had left through. But here too, Xu Huo had prepared a ”blood mutant” for him.

Two blood mutants, plus the proliferating wall growths, surrounded Hugo from all sides. Yet, he didn’t use the ”infectious disease” characteristic again. Instead, he took out a tuning fork and flicked it. Everything around him, whether monsters or blood mutants, instantly turned to dust. The hospital revealed its original appearance—metal-plated walls and the unprotected floor.

Not far away, Xu Huo, using a portal left by Bai Kou, hid downstairs. Hugo’s tuning fork wasn’t a damage-dealing item, but an awakening one. Among the Phantom Sound Knights, there was a member, Dou Shengnan, proficient in mental attacks. It wasn’t strange for team members to have some emergency countermeasures in this area. Relying solely on mental constructs to deplete Hugo’s characteristics wasn’t very effective.