Rhodes Island does not exist.

Thank you segment.

Thanks to cc94 for the monthly pass, thank you.

Chapter 25, Part 25: The Doctor Feels He Was Forced to Break His Promise

It’s hard to refuse such hospitality.

Although these oddities could understand human speech and comprehend the meaning behind the doctor's words, the distance from one end of the eighth floor to the other was simply too long, so the doctor ultimately spent a considerable amount of time among these enthusiastic oddities.

Oh no, this can't be called a waste of time.

Caring for pets is not a waste; it's a necessary expense.

In short, the doctor finally pushed open the door to the eighth-floor exit, covered in sticky tissue fluid, and climbed the short staircase leading to the ninth floor.

Strangely enough, the last time he came to the ninth floor, he seemed to step into the elevator without thinking and did not do any search or other work on this floor.

However, it's not hard to understand, since he was chasing Skadi at the time, so he certainly couldn't think of anything else. And it's the same now.

When you have a short-term goal that you are eager to achieve, any side road you take will become an obstacle.

The doctor stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the tenth floor.

This was the second elevator he had seen inside Rhode Island.

Although he hadn't been able to raise any questions when he was with Skadi last time, now that he thought about it, the arrangement of the floors accessible in the elevator was indeed a bit strange.

Nine floors, ten floors, fifteen floors.

The abrupt arrangement of floors made him realize that common sense probably didn't exist on Rhodes Island.

"Ding."

We have reached the tenth floor.

The elevator doors slowly opened to both sides.

The familiar scene unfolded before the doctor's eyes; he could almost smell the stench emanating from room 1002, even from inside the elevator car.

I wonder if Skadi will still be waiting for him to come back.

Let’s hope so.

With this hope in his heart, the doctor stepped out of the elevator car and looked toward room 1002.

The bloodstains at the door were almost dry and were gradually turning into patches.

The door, which should have been closed, was now slightly ajar, allowing light to filter through and spill onto the hallway floor.

"That pool of blood... it must be some strange mechanism created by the room itself to attract prey," the doctor thought.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain why blood would leak from such a sturdy and sealed biological tank.

It can even reverse the biological cycle of decomposition, yet it can't hold back even a tiny bit of liquid?

This is not reasonable.

"cough."

The doctor coughed lightly. He really wanted to call out Skadi's name, but considering that the other rooms on this floor had not yet been explored, he suppressed the urge and slowly walked towards the door of room 1002.

The journey is very short, you could say it's almost just a few steps.

The doctor stood at the door of room 1002 and pushed it open.

Immediately following, his body's instinctive reaction caused him to reach out and cover his mouth and nose tightly.

It was a strong, putrid stench, like fermentation; it turned out that what he had smelled in the elevator was not an illusion at all.

It was as if the entire room was a giant greenhouse petri dish, and someone had thrown in the slaughter waste of hundreds of livestock and kept it suffocating for more than a month.

—If I had to describe the smell that hit me just now, this would be it.

"Depend on."

Staring at the hellish scene before him, the doctor covered his mouth and nose, cursing inwardly.

The room was filled with mud spread out like minced meat.

Or rather, it was all like mud.

As for what those things actually were, it's probably impossible to tell now.

However, although it is impossible to identify them, their composition is probably not from anything else.

"Last time in this room, all the organs assembled into a monster, which Skadi eventually dealt with. So the rotten mud on the ground now is probably those organs."

The doctor made this conjecture in his mind.

But how could that be?

Even if he spent some time on death and reshaping, it shouldn't have taken this long, right?

The bloodstains outside the door hadn't completely dried yet.

How could the decay of organic matter be faster than the drying up of blood?

unless.

He stood at the doorway of the room, just a hair's breadth away from the muddy ground where he couldn't even put his foot down—and from that spot, he scanned the room.

In some corners of the room, a few organs remained that had not been used by the monster.

Fortunately, there's still some left, which can be used to support my reasoning. The professor thought to himself.

However, how to get through this mud to obtain those organs was another problem, and he really didn't want to wade through this indescribable swamp of decay.

-

"Hey."

But in the end, the PhD student still made it across.

In an environment where life and death are uncertain, worrying about getting your shoes dirty is rather naive.

Doing anything is acceptable as long as it achieves the goal—that's the attitude one should have.

The professor held half of a Liberi gizzard that had just been taken out of the terrarium, and thought to himself.

Incidentally, while he was retrieving the organs, he also checked to make sure he had left his pickaxe in the room.

The answer is no.

It seems that his weapons were most likely taken away when Skadi left.

Let’s hope so.

This was the second time he had thought of this sentence since he arrived on the tenth floor.

After all, the other party is the elusive Skadi, so he can't have too high hopes of finding her. So he can only hope that "it will be so."

"Snapped."

Thinking this, the doctor threw the sandbag in his hand onto a spot on the floor in the room that was not yet covered by mud.

The fresh gizzard was still pulsating, as if it were still alive inside the body.

But this scene did not last long.

The doctor's gaze gradually sharpened as he stared at it.

Because when the gizzard was exposed to the outside air for one minute, its color changed.

The once bright red, blood-stained sac-like organ began to lose its vibrant color and gradually faded to a darker hue.

Corrosive spots began to sprout up one after another on its surface like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. The doctor knew that once something surfaced, it meant that many things beneath the surface were already completely rotten.

Along with the signs of decay, the gizzard also shrank. Moreover, this change occurred so quickly that even a blind person could see it.

"stop."

Then, after silently counting to one minute and thirty-eight seconds, the doctor softly said the word "stop".

The once vibrant and throbbing gizzard has now been completely assimilated into the mud that has filled the entire room.

"It seems I understand now what the principle behind this biological tank is."

The doctor let out a wry laugh, tinged with lingering fear.

"Sorry, my little cuties on the eighth floor, there's nothing to feed you now."

-

I finished updating despite the temptation of 2077, and now I'm back in Night City as Samura.

The following is the thank-you section.

Thank you for the blades and monthly passes, thank you.

Thanks for the spicy snacks.

Chapter 26, The Winding Journey of Sword Marks

The doctor never doubted his own speculation.

It's as if there's a professional censorship agency inside his mind. Every guess and every idea goes through layers of testing by the agency, and then the correct result that remains after filtering is output to the surface of his consciousness.

Perhaps this is the kind of experience that can't be erased even if the memory is erased.

“The collector once said that,” the doctor thought, looking at the mud before him.

"These bio-tanks can reverse the cycle of biological decomposition, allowing what should have died or been transformed into bizarre residue to return to its original form."

"But what if these restored objects are taken out of the bio-tank?"

The mud in front of us is the best proof.

“When things that should have rotted away long ago are removed from the bio-tank again, they lose the privilege of reversing the damage.”

"The effects of the bio-tank are not permanent, but only limited to the space inside the tank. Therefore, as soon as the items in the tank leave the tank, they will quickly lose their effect and revert to their original state before they entered the bio-tank in a very short time."

"That is, a purely rotten form."

"So, if I were to actually feed these organs to those little creatures on the eighth floor, they would definitely rot inside their bellies, which would be bad."

"But thinking about it carefully, they are strange themselves, so eating them probably wouldn't be a problem, right?"

Then, the doctor realized that the problem wasn't whether they could eat these things, but how he was going to get all this sludge up to the eighth floor.

You can't just scoop it up with your hands; that would be too stupid and disgusting.

Anyway, feeding play is temporarily out of the question; we'll think about it again when we find a better solution.

The doctor thought to himself, and then realized that he seemed to have accomplished none of the three things he had listed.

Go back to the tenth floor to get the pickaxe—the pickaxe is gone.

Go to the sixth floor—I haven't figured out how to get there yet.

Skadi was found—but Skadi was also missing.

The PhD student made a plan and then tried to implement it.

But damn it, he did a terrible job. The way he tried to feed the weirdo on the eighth floor but ended up covered in slime and mud was just like a reflection of his life.

Wasting time and accomplishing nothing.

And nobody loves him.

-

That's enough of the jokes.

Now, the doctoral candidate is actually left with only two paths.

Skadi, and the sixth floor.

After all, the pickaxe is likely already bound to Skadi, so in reality it makes no difference.

So, which one should we choose first?

"Skadi."

Without much thought, the doctor came up with the name Skadi in his mind.

Of course, it wasn't entirely because he could get his pickaxe back from Skadi.

He simply felt that in this place full of unknowns and darkness, it would be better to have a female hunter with exceptional combat skills by his side.