Night quickly fell.
Faint crying could be heard.
Alhaitham pointed in a direction. "That's right. The crying is coming from that direction."
Paimon followed him in, looking around. "Is the source of the sound here? But I don't see anything."
Alhaitham was silent for a moment, then said, "It's below."
"It seems there's something hidden here."
With that, Alhaitham opened a floorboard, revealing a basement below.
The basement was large and divided into many rooms.
Paimon murmured, "It's like there's another hospital hidden beneath the hospital."
[Cyno: A hospital that needs such a complex structure built underground? It seems this place was never just a hospital to begin with.]
[Alhaitham: A reasonable deduction. The Akademiya building a hospital in the desert was already suspicious. This is likely an abandoned research facility. The hospital was just a cover.]
[Lumine: The Akademiya has been secretly conducting certain research all along.]
[Dehya: Either way, the Akademiya is definitely not on the side of good.]
[Paimon: This is infuriating! How can they be this evil?]
[Dehya: Stealing dreams, tricking people into believing that Sumeru citizens simply don't dream—that's a massive lie. And one that's been going on for centuries.]
[Lumine: Could it be that the Akademiya had the idea of creating a god a very long time ago?]
[Alhaitham: No. Based on current information, the Akademiya likely only developed such ideas after coming into contact with Scaramouche. However, sacrificing lives to support research is probably something they've always done.]
The group moved through the rooms and soon found a mad scholar in a furnished room, curled up and crying, making incoherent sounds.
Paimon said, "He can't speak at all, and his eyes are vacant. But he doesn't look old enough to be someone's grandfather."
"And he's the only one here?"
Alhaitham was silent for a moment, then said to the mad scholar, "I never expected to find you here."
Paimon asked, "You two know each other?"
Alhaitham said, "Yes. This man's name is Razak. He was my senior at the Akademiya."
Paimon asked, "One of those people who went to train in the forest?"
Alhaitham paused for two seconds. "Razak was never one for that approach. He never trained in the forest, let alone reached the period of forest-induced madness."
Lumine asked, "Then how did he end up like this?"
[Paimon: That's really frightening. How did this happen?]
[Alhaitham: I suspect he was investigating something, just like I was, and that's how he ended up like this.]
[Paimon: That makes it even scarier.]
Alhaitham said, "Leaving that aside for now, the fact that he's here alone means we're too late."
"It seems the other party has already pulled everyone out. As for him, he was probably left behind for some reason, or simply couldn't be moved in time."
Alhaitham looked at the floor. "There are dragging marks on the ground. Near the entrance, the marks get deeper, suggesting that someone was hauling carts loaded with heavy objects."
Paimon proposed a horrifying guess. "Were those carts carrying people?"
Alhaitham nodded. "That's possible. They seemed to be in a hurry, afraid of being caught. In their rush, they didn't notice Razak hiding in the corner."