Enforcer Manual
Chapter 383: To the Pollution Master_1

Chapter 383: Chapter 383: To the Pollution Master_1

When a person finds themselves in peril and utterly alone, despair slowly begins to consume them.

Big Radish Head was in just such a situation, with a burning pain starting to emanate from the palm of his right hand, but he didn’t dare to look at it even once.

In such circumstances, any abnormality could completely crush his sanity.

His fate had been hinted at in the online journal of an "Adventurer," with no way to ascend or descend from where he was.

The "Adventurer" had called this place "The Contaminated Stairwell," after mistakenly entering the area while following new exploration instructions from the Void Investigation Bureau when he was supposed to use the emergency passage to go downstairs.

There were no Void creatures in this area, but there was an indeterminable source of contamination, with every attempt to move either up or down the stairs exacerbating the pollution.

The dividing lines were the 10th, 20th, and 30th floors.

On the 10th floor, the doors on one side of the passageway were completely corroded by contamination; on the 20th floor, the pollution would climb up the ceilings and walls; by the 30th floor, which was also where the journal ended, even the ground beneath your feet would be covered by contamination, leaving no safe place to stand.

Towards the end of the journal, the "Adventurer" had not found a way out of the passageway and could only watch helplessly as his skin peeled away and corroded like the walls around him until the pollution continued to eat away at muscle tissue, turning a person into a skeleton.

The journal specifically mentioned not to attempt to break through the doors.

The doors were highly contaminated.

Big Radish Head slumped to the ground, the burning sensation in his hand growing stronger and showing signs of spreading to his arm.

This was nothing like the ventures into the Void he had imagined.

The notes left by those "Adventurers" mentioned some relatively safe areas, inhabited by friendly Void creatures, where "Adventurers" could trade for unique local Void products. Selling these products could make him a fortune.

But he never expected that what awaited him in the Void would be such a deadly region.

He wanted to record something but realized he was not an "Adventurer"; he didn’t even have paper and pen nearby. The contamination would completely devour him, leaving his skeleton lonely and abandoned, and probably no one in this world would know he had ever been here.

But the contamination didn’t stop spreading.

He saw contaminants from the door fall to the floor, leaving behind a black scorch mark that then started to grow sprouts outward like blood vessels, slowly expanding.

In the silence as profound as death, he faintly heard a voice.

"Keep going straight along the cardiopulmonary department, and you will find a trolley with two serums on it..."

He thought he was hallucinating, but the voice grew closer and closer until he felt it was just beyond a door.

"I’m here, I’m here!"

His will to survive ignited, Big Radish Head began to shout loudly. He no longer cared if there were other Void creatures outside, because it was clearly mentioned on the website that deep within the Void were monsters that liked to provide "Adventurers" with hope in moments of despair, only to mercilessly snatch it away afterward.

It seemed that his cry for help was heard, as the person on the other side of the door stopped talking to themselves.

Then everything went back to the silence of just a few seconds ago, a complete stillness.

Next, an ear-splitting bang startled Big Radish Head, and he fell to the ground.

After two or three seconds of blankness in his mind, he saw through the haze as a fire ax chopped an opening through the contaminated door. On the other side of the gap was a person in a white hazmat suit, looking somewhat bulky and somewhat hindered in their movements by the suit as they wielded the ax.

But...

At least it was a human, a living human!

Big Radish Head’s legs went weak. He stayed where he was, waiting for the person in the hazmat suit to completely break open the door. When they finally came over to him, they grabbed his right hand that he had hidden behind his back without saying a word. As he instinctively screamed, the rescuer poured a liquid that looked a lot like hand sanitizer over it.

The burning sensation miraculously disappeared and, moments later, he was able to look directly at his own hand, which had been in contact with the contamination.

The scabs and ugly black material that had been there were washed away by this unknown liquid.

"Thank you so much, I am..."

"Don’t tell me your name," came a man’s voice from behind the mask. "Don’t even tell me how you got here. If you want to live, just follow me."

"I want to live. Can you get me out of here?"

Hope sparkled in Big Radish Head’s eyes as he could hardly contain his excitement. "You’re an ’Adventurer’!"

In the Void, only "Adventurers," who moved freely and carried ample equipment and supplies, existed. Lu Xiang quickly realized that now was not the time to relax, as they were clearly not in the prosthetic hospital anymore. The corridor was deserted, medical equipment like hand-pushed carts was skewed along the roadside, and red lights blinked continuously overhead.

The place looked as if a severe incident had occurred, and everyone had fled.

He didn’t know where he was, as the website had obviously never recorded this place.

Following the "Adventurer" closely, the two of them wandered through this floor for a while before entering a surgery room.

The man wearing a toxic mask didn’t seem interested in interacting with him; he kept muttering nonstop, "There’s a desiccated corpse on the surgery table, and the opened part is the chest, not the abdomen..."

"Big Radish Head" watched the man inspect the corpse from beginning to end. He didn’t dare get close; just watching from a distance was enough to make him feel nauseous.

After checking the corpse, the man moved to the computer desk, shifted it aside, and suddenly revealed an irregularly shaped hole corroded into the floor below, big enough for only one person to pass through, with no clear view of what lay on the other end.

Just as "Big Radish Head" was having second thoughts, the man approached him and handed him a few posters.

"This exit leads to a corridor. Once you go down, don’t stop, don’t look back, and run with all your might."

"Can you at least tell me what kind of monster is chasing me so I can prepare myself mentally?"

"Pollution," the man said. "From now on, you only need to remember one name."

"...Uh?"

"Medea, she is the source of all pollution."

"Big Radish Head" wanted to ask more, but a piercing scream from deep in the corridor blanked out his mind again. As he stood stunned, the man yanked him into the room, slammed the door shut, and used every possible obstacle to barricade the entrance.

Before entering, he caught a glimpse of a humanoid creature, its body charred black.

The sound of banging on the door brought "Big Radish Head" back to reality.

He watched helplessly as the man brought over a chair, picked up a firefighting suit, and sat down by the door.

"What about you?"

"Medea, remember this name, don’t forget it."

...

Gathering all the courage of his life, "Big Radish Head" clenched the posters handed to him by the man and leapt through the jagged hole just as the charred unknown creatures were about to break through the door.

The other end of the hole was a long corridor that stretched out of sight.

Almost at the same time, a heart-pounding sensation flooded his entire body. For an instant, he saw the walls peeling away behind him and an unknown substance pouring down like blood.

Run.

That was the only thought left in his mind.

He couldn’t afford to ponder where the corridor led. All he could do was run with all his might, but the noises behind him continued to gain on him at an even faster pace.

The corner of his eye could see the wall peeling uplifted by the "blood," and the buckling floor.

Something landed on his shoulder, yet the long corridor still showed no end.

That feeling became more and more distinct until it was overwhelmingly irresistible. His body was pulled back by the force, and he was immersed in the "blood."

Almost simultaneously, he heard a woman’s stern voice by his ear.

"Are you out of your mind?"

He smelled fresh air once again, and his view was filled with Lu Xiang’s icy gaze.

He was standing at the entrance of the prosthetic hospital, right at the curb, nearly plunging into the bustling traffic.

Lu Xiang asked, "Why are you running?"

"Medea..."

After being stunned for another few seconds, "Radish Head" came back to his senses. He stared at the passing cars for quite a while before he started muttering as if possessed, "It’s Medea, the pollution was caused by her!"