Ren smashed through the nearest window without ceremony. Glass cracked, then collapsed under his shoulder with a dry pop as he tumbled through into the dark. The floor caught him with a wet slap, and for a second, he lay there breathing hard, hands pressed to the pulsing surface. It wasn't wood. It wasn't a tile. It throbbed faintly, like an infection trying to pretend it was architecture.
He pushed himself up and looked around.
The building was larger on the inside than the outside had suggested. Its layout twisted in ways that made no spatial sense, hallways looping into each other, staircases bending in half and vanishing into fleshwalls. He recognized the signs—this place had been assimilated. Not just corrupted. Absorbed.
Something nearby made a high, sharp noise.
Ren moved on instinct, following the sound down a narrow corridor that pulsed like a throat. He emerged into what might have once been a cafeteria: long tables now fused into the walls, chairs melted like wax. In the corner, something cried.
A child-shaped creature. No older than five, at a glance. Skin pale and rubbery. Its limbs were mostly intact, though its back was fused halfway into the wall, red tendrils already crawling up its spine. One arm flailed weakly.
It sobbed, a sharp, garbled sound like wet lungs trying to imitate human grief.
Ren stepped forward, eyes scanning for the veinlines. The assimilation hadn't reached the head. That was good. He reached into his coat and pulled out the anesthetic, fingers tightening around the syringe as he approached.
"Hey," he muttered. "You're not dead yet. Good news."
The child turned slightly. No recognition. No words. But it didn't scream.
He jabbed the injection just below the ribcage. The fluid hissed as it took effect, and the child's body went slack. The tendrils reacted violently, pulling tight like retracting nerves. Ren didn't wait. He summoned the tentacles.
They burst from his back, each one lunging forward with surgical precision. One held the torso steady. Another slid a scalpel from his inventory. The other two grabbed and cut, working to separate flesh from wall without rupturing tissue.
It took thirty seconds. Not clean, but fast. The child collapsed forward, limp and free.
Ren caught them with one arm, checked the vitals—shallow breath, erratic pulse, but alive—and laid them gently away from the wall. Then he stood and looked up.
Dozens of eyes were watching him.
The far end of the room had collapsed inward, forming a concave space where walls had folded back. At least a hundred people were crammed into the recess. Civilians. Maybe. Or what was left of them.
He stepped closer.
Some looked human. Most didn't. One man had a horn curling from his temple like an antler. A woman crouched nearby, clutching her stomach, intestines coiled like a child in her lap. Another figure rocked slowly, face blackened and melted, eyelids sealed shut. The air smelled like rot and antiseptic.
A Voice ecchoes in his skull.
[Trial Update: Mid-Stage Objective Initiated]
Objective: Provide medical assistance to the Plague-Affected Civilians.
He exhaled slowly.
"Of course it's a fucking side quest," he muttered.
He didn't ask who needed help first. He already knew.
All of them.
The number must exceeding hundred
And every single one looked at him the same way like he was either salvation or something worse.
Ren walked forward.
"Alright," he said. "Here's the deal. If you're still breathing, you qualify as a patient. If you're not breathing, congrats you're on the waitlist."
No one laughed.
A woman with a partially fused jaw raised her hand slowly.
He rolled his neck. "Fine. You're first."
.
.
.
The next ten hours blurred.
Not because they passed quickly, but because they passed loudly. Very loudly.
The room echoed with screams. People writhed. Nerves snapped. Guts spilled and were shoved back in. One man vomited for thirty-eight straight minutes. Another had a seizure mid-reconstruction and nearly bit off his own tongue.
The worst was the sound of tearing flesh when Ren had to slice mutated limbs off before they assimilated into the floor. One patient started praying halfway through. Another tried to offer him a finger as payment. Ren accepted it. Not because he needed the finger he just wanted the man to stop talking.
His tentacles worked nonstop, shifting between triage and surgery without rest. The Whisper of Anatomy handled diagnostics, sliding into chests, sinuses, and spinal tracts like it had a weekend home there. The Outer God scalpel cut through everything. Bone. Tumor. Fabricated growths shaped like tumors but filled with teeth.
He didn't speak much.
Just muttered instructions. Injected anesthesia. Cut. Sewed. Cut again.
And through it all, the screams didn't stop.
Which, according to the System, meant excellent progress.
[Fear Points Gained: +58]
[Fear Points Gained: +44]
[Fear Points Gained: +73]
He stopped counting after five hundred.
The blood coated his coat. His boots. His face. His hands were raw by the end, skin scalded from repeated exposure to infected tissue. His shoulders ached from maintaining tentacle posture for so long. His eyes felt dry, like he hadn't blinked in hours.
Because he hadn't.
But he was still standing.
And more importantly so were they.
Not all. Some had died screaming. A few had tried to escape mid-surgery and bled out. One exploded.
But most lived.
The mutated man with the horn? His bone growth had been stabilized, neural tension rerouted.
The woman with the intestines? Reassembled and functional.
The child he'd saved from the wall?
Still asleep. Still breathing.
Ren sat down against the far wall. His body slumped but didn't fall.
He watched the room, now filled with groaning, half-conscious survivors—dozens of people who had seen the inside of his twisted, accidental medicine and hadn't died from it.
He whispered to no one in particular.
"First, do no harm."
Then he let his head fall back against the meat wall behind him.
"…Unless you have to."