Chapter 304 Monster Hospital (Part 3)
Thirty seconds is not a long time. In a blink of an eye, the time for choosing is over. No player would want to try. There are no consequences for choices in a level 3S copy, so even players who find it difficult to make decisions strictly abide by the timeline.
After all the players made their choices, they were stunned for a moment, because the development of things would not end because of a simple principle, but would only unfold a series of plots because of this choice.
The man who was speaking paused deliberately, as if to allow the players to listen more carefully to the next task.
[The choice is over. You have chosen to become a patient. ]
Nanhuan, Beixi, and even other players from the guild alliance heard the system's voice in their minds.
Bei Xi did not stop her actions. While listening to the task, she tucked the blanket around Nan Huan. The weather outside was a bit cold. Compared to the system's prompts, she was obviously more interested in when she could take Nan Huan directly to the hospital.
【bite--
Congratulations to the player for triggering the side quest - enriching your character. 】
The system seemed to be able to sense Bei Xi's emotions from his silence and subtle irritability, so it did not keep him in suspense or delay time any longer, and directly released the side quest triggered by the other party's choice.
[Task Description: From now on, you are a patient who comes here because of its reputation. The Monster Hospital has abundant medical resources and the best doctors, so you choose to come here to continue treatment, but first you must be able to deceive the pre-examination doctor and detect that the disease that best matches the player is extremely severe split personality.]
When hearing the last few words, Bei Xi's eyelids twitched involuntarily.
Sure enough, even if one had to choose between patients and staff, it was not so easy for patients to sneak into the hospital. However, Bei Xi was more concerned about the criteria on which the system selected the most similar symptoms for players. She intuitively felt that the Monster Hospital was not the kind of hospital that would admit even patients with a headache or fever.
She was more curious about the hospital's standards for admitting patients, and what the system had just described, that patients came here because of its reputation.
Moreover, Nan Huan made his choice at about the same time as her, but it was obvious that he was still listening to the system's task prompts. Why was there such a big gap between their prompts? Was it because of the illness?
【bite--
Congratulations to the player for triggering the side quest - enriching your character.
Mission description: From now on, you are a patient who comes here because of its reputation. The Monster Hospital has abundant medical resources and the best doctors, so you choose to come here to continue treatment, but first you must be able to deceive the pre-examination doctor and detect that the most suitable disease for the player is borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc. 】
From the last two "wait", Nan Huan clearly sensed a hint of "as expected" from the system.
And according to her judgment, this is only the first side quest in the dungeon after all, and it is also a small episode before they enter the hospital and start the formal mission. In other words, the system cannot directly start a very difficult task right away, so the purpose of this task must be to allow more players to enter the hospital and enter the main part to some extent.
So if the system can detect the most suitable symptoms for the player to a certain extent, there must be only one, so that the player can imitate or cooperate without distraction. However, several of them suddenly appeared on his side, and some were even unmodified, which really puzzled Nan Huan.
The crowd was quiet for a few seconds, and then suddenly started to make a noise. After all, the man on the steps seemed to be deliberately giving everyone time to think and communicate slowly. At the same time, he directed several nurses to start moving some equipment from inside the hospital to the outside, preparing to set up a temporary pre-examination area at the door.
Just as the other party had just said, a pre-examination sign had been erected on the right side of the hospital entrance, but Nan Huan also noticed that a sign saying "Intern Sign-in Area" was also erected in the staff area on the left. It seemed that neither the so-called staff nor the patients could just walk in.
"I just don't understand. I just like pretty dresses. Why is my matching disease 'transvestite'?"
After President Alice activated the anti-eavesdropping device in Beixi, Mr. Lu complained helplessly. However, this sentence contained too much information, so Nan Huan, who was about to say something, stopped talking abruptly.
"If you change into some weird clothes later, and then when you are ready for the pre-inspection, hold the nurses' hands and buy two sets of uniforms from them, I guarantee you will pass the pre-inspection."
Nan Huan tried to break through from the front and make her tone sound more serious, but it was not known whether her tone was too serious or the content was too horrifying, so not only did it not have any effect, the players also stared at her with an expression as if they had finally seen what had happened.
Bei Xi coughed unconsciously. She didn't know what she was thinking about. Her face was a little red. She reached out and closed the twelve open mouths. With a cold tone, she pulled everyone's thoughts back. "Time is running out. If anyone has a disease that can't be compensated by props and acting skills, you can bring it up now. And everyone, please report to me the diseases that the system has matched to everyone. I need to make a statistics."
Twelve wiped the nonexistent saliva from the corner of his mouth and looked at the symptoms on his control panel with some dissatisfaction. "I think the system thinks I talk too much. How do I look like I have autism?"
Nan Huan touched her head with amusement and chose to swallow the truth. In fact, strictly speaking, Twelve was willing to interact with people she was familiar with, or she was willing to actively communicate within the safety range she set for herself. Although this situation was not serious and had not caused any impact on her life so far.
So in a sense, the system's judgment is somewhat based on facts.
However, Twelve was originally indignant, but after hearing about those even more outrageous hallucinations, persecution mania and the eldest lady's symptoms, he suddenly felt that his own illness was not unacceptable.
"Chairman, why did you decide to choose the patient when the mission was first released? In this instance, shouldn't we choose the staff member to be safer?"
President Barbie was not very concerned about the diagnosis of paranoia. Instead, she was very worried that all twenty-two of them would choose the patient. Putting all the eggs in one basket might be a bit risky.
Everyone had almost finished discussing the symptoms, and seeing that the pre-inspection area on the steps would take some time to complete, Bei Xi simply found a way to make a cup of hot tea for Nan Huan from the control panel, and explained it to everyone else while enjoying the rising steam.
"To some extent, which one do you think is stronger, the staff or the patients?"
"Of course it's the staff," Twelve answered heartlessly, "After all, some of the hospitals we entered in the past were horrible. Patients always need to abide by more rules and face more deaths. The hospital is a place with restrictive rules."
"So the choice the game gives us is unfair from the beginning. Under this unfair bias, the higher the risk the patient takes, the greater the possibility of obtaining information and triggering tasks. This is the principle of proportional benefits and risks."
After the discussion was almost over, the teams on both sides had already shown a tendency to move slowly. Since the First Guild Alliance was originally standing at the far right position, they did not move for the time being. Bei Xi's eyes fell on the large-scale migration on the other side. At the end, he added, "Of course, there is another reason. After I entered this dungeon, based on the system's plot outline, I had a very bad premonition, so I gave up the half-and-half idea directly."
"What bad feeling?"
The Workers' Union President was puzzled. She had always thought that the President was rational and thought that she would never hear words like sixth sense or omen from him, so she became even more curious.
"You'll know in a moment. The pre-inspection is just a side quest. I don't think the system will make things difficult for you, but you still have to be careful."
Bei Xi did not answer directly, but kept the question in suspense and gave a few more instructions.
The man on the steps saw that the time was almost up, so he asked everyone to line up as soon as possible according to the formation he had mentioned before. In a moment, the president of the workers' union understood what the president had meant.
Because the teams on the left and right sides showed an obviously uneven distribution, even a very tilted state.
There were nearly a hundred players in the team, and the number of people standing on the right side of the patient barely squeezed into the ranks of thirty, while the remaining players all stood on the side of the staff.
That means that apart from the original twenty-two people, there are not many people who choose to side with the patients. Moreover, the Workers' Guild President soon noticed that the remaining players who chose the patients' side were all neutral players. In other words, nearly fifty players from the Anti-One Guild Alliance all made the choice to become staff members within thirty seconds.
"That's impossible. There are only 30 seconds between the announcement and the selection of the mission. Did they use that time to directly select the staff?" The Pink President had just recovered from her fantasy practice and frowned when she saw the obviously tilted team. "But how can they be sure that the staff will definitely have an advantage? Shouldn't the most balanced approach be 50-50? In this way, they bet on both sides. Even if they also realize the reason for fairness, they should make the same choice as us. How could this happen?"
"Not only that," Nan Huan swallowed the last sip of hot tea, feeling his whole body warm. He glanced at the opposing team, "After the system task was announced just now, the fifty players of the Anti-One Guild Alliance did not show any emotion called 'embarrassment' on their faces. They didn't even communicate with each other. In less than ten seconds, they made their choice together with us."
"What?"
The Sixth Vice President was surprised for a moment. She didn't know when the eldest lady started to suspect her, nor did she know whether she did it on purpose or discovered it accidentally. "If that's the case, then it means..."
"It means that they knew exactly what they were going to choose when the mission was released. Or the system gave them a different mission from us. Or maybe something else happened in the unusual darkness before entering the dungeon that we don't know about."
Nan Huan finished what she wanted to say, and when the other players gasped, she hurriedly explained, "Don't worry about being targeted. You see, the system has never cared about it from the beginning to the end. What if it's just a coincidence that all the players are afraid of death and choose staff. What should we do if there are no patients? So numbers are not an advantage. And don't forget that the staff also need to abide by some rules and regulations to a certain extent. So the system's idea should not be to simply create a confrontational scene and use the rules of the game to make the other party kill each other."
"Pre-examination begins now," a nurse stood in front of the sign on the steps. She had a list in her hand. "Patients whose names are read, please come forward."
Fortunately, the players heard the eldest lady's words before hearing their own names, so they did not show their timidity.
The temporary pre-examination area is just a consultation area separated by a screen on the upper right side of the stairs. There is a table in the consultation area and a nurse sitting behind the table. The peculiar thing is that next to the table there is an instrument more than two meters high, which looks a bit like a large camera, but the scanning area at the front end is larger than that of ordinary machines and can scan the entire body.
The first person to be called up was President Barbie. She started her performance the moment she raised her foot. The system indicated that her symptoms were 'paranoia'.
President Barbie did not use any props, but just used the search props to browse the clinical manifestations of many patients with paranoia. She kept her head down all the way, refusing to make eye contact with anyone, but she was very sensitive to the movements of people around her.
When they were going up the stairs, a nurse couldn't stand her slow movements and seemed to want to go forward to help her. However, before her hand touched President Barbie, she trembled like a frightened rabbit, took a big step back, and tremblingly took out a dagger from her arms, pointing it in the direction of the people who came, "You just want to kill me, you just want to kill me..."
She was shaking all over, and she slashed the air several times with the dagger in hand. She didn't hurt anyone else, but the back of her hand was scratched and blood flowed out. President Barbie seemed to not notice it at all, and soon the objects of her coercion became the players around her.
The players cooperated and retreated, but this did not make President Barbie feel better. She seemed to be in some kind of hallucination. One hand kept rubbing her neck, and her slender nails soon scratched her neck with blood. "I know you installed a surveillance camera in my throat. You want to hurt me, you want to hurt me..."
Twelve hid behind the eldest lady and the first president and took a look. He touched his neck unconsciously, "President Barbie is trying too hard. This is even more exciting than an Oscar winner. We won't have much room to perform later. It hurts just watching."
Although it was just a skin wound, blood was seen. The nurse did not seem to have expected this to happen to the first patient. She was careless for a moment. After receiving a critical look from the man, she quickly regained her professionalism.
"Patient 1056, I know someone wants to harm you," she kept smiling and raised her hands so that President Barbie could see her hands. There was no room for weapons. She slowly approached President Barbie and used words to attract her attention. "We have detected the monitor in your throat. Come with me. After the examination, we can arrange for you to have surgery to remove the thing."
She deliberately lowered her voice, as if she was whispering to President Barbie, creating a sense of secrecy, and then invisibly merged herself with the other party into one country. She stretched out her hand while speaking, "Hurry up and give us the dagger. We need to get checked and then have surgery. You don't want to be monitored by them anymore, do you?"
This nurse was very professional. Just like the information that President Barbie had just checked, she slowly relaxed her guard, but still kept getting close to others and her body couldn't stop shaking. After handing the dagger to the other person, she quickly distanced herself from them. Even when she was slowly sitting at the table, she tried to keep herself away from other people's contact as much as possible.
The white screen could only cover half of the table, and President Barbie's condition was completely exposed to the players. The players soon noticed that after President Barbie sat down, the nurse opposite her didn't say anything, but just turned on the machine next to the table.
When President Barbie was startled by the sound of the machine, she comforted him, "Don't be afraid, this is just an examination, and you can go for surgery after it's done..."
In fact, it was difficult for President Barbie to hear what the other party said, because the moment the machine was turned on, she suddenly felt a chill all over her body, and her thinking and consciousness were infinitely slowed down. She could see how the doctor spoke, but it was difficult to distinguish the meaning of her words.
The chill slowly invaded her mind from her limbs, as if trying to find out the smallest clue hidden in her from the most delicate part of her body and to undermine her willpower. President Barbie clenched her hands unconsciously.
"Are you a betrayer trying to sneak into the hospital?"
Suddenly, a voice appeared in President Barbie's mind. It was calm at first, but then it suddenly turned into thousands of voices, which drilled into her mind like ants, trying to cause some fluctuations, or to make her react instinctively through this action.
President Barbie endured the severe pain in her head and did not respond, trying to pretend that nothing had happened. Her slowly functioning brain seemed to finally realize why she was here now.
She had to disguise herself as a patient with paranoia and sneak into the hospital as a patient. If she couldn't get into the hospital, she would have no way of knowing the truth.
Unable to respond, unable to make any response or reaction.
"Someone wants to harm me, they are monitoring me..." President Barbie curled up her body, as if stimulated by something, and returned to her previous sensitive state, muttering words like "monitoring" and "murder". Although her head was hurting more and more, she never revealed any information.
The mobile scanning machine finally returned to silence again. President Barbie felt her headache gradually eased, and she knew that she had passed this level.
Beep——
The machine beeped twice. After checking the numbers on the display, the nurse behind the desk picked up a pen and wrote a few words on President Barbie's information. At the same time, she looked up and instructed the nurse next to her, "The examination shows that patient No. 1056 is temporarily in Zone C symptoms and is suspected of being admitted to the hospital."
The players from the guild alliance all breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that the pre-check could indeed be passed with some acting skills. Just like what the eldest lady had said before, the system would not enter the clearing mode right away.
But Nan Huan noticed that the nurse called out the number from beginning to end, and after the test was completed, she did not disclose the real cause and symptoms of President Barbie's illness, but only said "Zone C symptoms". Did she not want to disclose the patient's privacy, or was this the way the illness was called in this hospital?
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