Chapter Summaries

Yi Chen followed Hogni Zed into a heavily secured underground office and learned that the academy closely monitored the disgraced associate professor. Professor Chamberson watched their meeting and explained that he had sent Yi Chen to Zed to improve his physical abilities, while Ms. Oresa promised to help keep him alive.

• Yi Chen followed Zed down through the sealed teaching building and learned that the academy would execute Zed if it deemed him to be escaping.
• Yi Chen entered Zed's underground office, where surveillance eyes monitored every room, and Little Grape explained that Zed had no concept of eyes in his body and could not regenerate them.
• Professor Chamberson watched the surveillance footage and reassured himself that Yi Chen and Zed had met without incident.
• Chamberson told Ms. Oresa that he had sent Yi Chen to Zed because of Zed's unmatched talent in physical training.
• Ms. Oresa said she would pay closer attention to Yi Chen and do her best to prevent his death.

Teacher Zed put Yi Chen through a six-hour examination to study his body and determine how to develop his physical potential. Yi Chen survived the ordeal, and Zed concluded that his body was well suited to Zed’s training methods.

• Teacher Zed showed Yi Chen the academy spaces he could use and took him to his human body laboratory for an examination.
• Yi Chen calmly lay on the operating table as restraints locked him in place, and Zed began cutting into his body to study its internal structure.
• Zed sustained Yi Chen with vitality through a vascular connection as the examination continued for six hours, until Yi Chen lost consciousness.
• Yi Chen awoke in the temporary corpse-storage room, checked that his body was intact, and found black lines marking its structure and measurements.
• Teacher Zed brought Yi Chen food and the detailed examination report, praised his endurance, and explained that he had identified Yi Chen’s potential and path toward the Limit Membrane.

Yi Chen asked whether he could match Dagobert’s strength, and Zede explained that he would instead train Yi Chen to reach his own physical limits. Zede led him to a gruesome underground gym and started him on a spiked treadmill, leaving the story with Yi Chen running under Zede’s watch.

• Yi Chen asked if he could develop strength like Dagobert, and Zede said Dagobert had an innate talent that Yi Chen could not match within two years.
• Zede told Yi Chen he would focus on the physical quality best suited to him and promised he could reach his physical limit with intensive training.
• After Yi Chen finished eating, Zede led him through a secret passage to his underground training chamber, which the academy approved for use.
• Zede ordered Yi Chen to run on a spiked treadmill until his stamina was completely depleted, explaining that the training would help him gain control over his body.
• Yi Chen removed his clothes, strapped himself to the treadmill, and was connected to a blood-circulation system as Zede watched him begin running.

After six months of grueling special training under Zede, Yi Chen finally shed his damaged skin and transformed, increasing his Physique from 2 to 3. With the half-year deadline eleven days away, he emerged from the training with a body better suited to him and a new path for further growth.

• Edmund and the others noticed Yi Chen's deteriorating condition, but he rejected their help and continued special training in Zede's Paradise.
• Professor Chamberson offered to end Yi Chen's training and arrange treatment, but Yi Chen chose to continue; Chamberson secured a mission delay of up to half a year.
• Over the following months, Yi Chen's health and hair gradually recovered, though his Physique remained at 2 as he followed Zede's demanding routine.
• Eleven days before the deadline, Yi Chen kept training past his usual limit, and Zede told him to follow what his body wanted.
• Blood Mist poured from Yi Chen as he ran, and he shed his damaged skin while new, healthier skin formed beneath it.
• Yi Chen's exertion destroyed the treadmill, and his Gentleman's Skin showed that his Physique had risen from 2 to 3 and his Diseased Trait proficiency had increased.

After Professor Chamberson tested Yi Chen’s unusual physique and reminded him to choose risky missions, Yi Chen left the Academy and joined Edmund Mariano’s team at Gentleman Hall. A supervisor noticed Yi Chen’s First Gentleman credential and ordered the team’s index recalculated so they could receive special missions.

• Professor Chamberson praised Yi Chen’s inherited physical trait, and Yi Chen said he was ready to leave for Zion’s Gentleman Hall.
• Yi Chen traveled by train out of the Academy and felt sunlight awaken the plants within him.
• Edmund Mariano and two teammates met Yi Chen at the station, and Yi Chen agreed to join their team for missions.
• The team registered Yi Chen at Gentleman Hall, where an employee noticed his First Gentleman credential and reported it to a supervisor.
• A supervisor ordered Yi Chen to count as three times the New Gentleman index and directed staff to assign the team relatively special missions.

A Gentleman Hall supervisor brought Edmund’s team three challenging missions after sizing up Yi Chen, and the squad considered the risks and rewards of recovering secret medicine from the ruined Twilight Clinic. They chose that mission and planned to prepare before departing tomorrow or the day after.

• A Gentleman Hall supervisor arrived after a long delay and personally presented the team with three missions of increased difficulty.
• Edmund read the mission briefs for a village sacrifice, disappearances at an apartment building, and secret medicine recovery at the Twilight Clinic.
• Julianna recommended the secret medicine mission because it offered a rare chance to obtain Source Fluid and advance in rank.
• Yi Chen agreed that the mission had both benefits and risks, and Edmund selected it while asking the team to prepare before setting out.

Edmund’s team read the classified report on the False Moon Incident, which described the destruction of Vinal City and the emergence of an Open Source Patient. The account reminded Yi Chen of Teacher Zed’s lesson on pathogenization stages and the special method needed to kill an Open Source.

• Edmund and the team agreed to accept the mission and followed the supervisor to a private room in Gentleman Hall’s middle-level area.
• The supervisor gave them ten minutes to read the classified report about the False Moon Incident.
• The report revealed that Moonscar, an Open Source Patient disguised among Vinal City’s residents, caused a mass infection that killed nearly all local investigators and left Doctor Maco critically wounded.
• Yi Chen recalled Teacher Zed’s lesson explaining how infected people progressed from the Pathogenization Stage through Pathological Transformation to the Open-Source Stage.
• The lesson stated that Open Source beings had a health-like tubular structure tied to Primal Disease, and that their life force had to be depleted before they could be truly harmed.

Yi Chen and his team accepted a mission to retrieve the Twilight Clinic’s secret medicine, though he suspected the False Moon report was incomplete. Professor Chamberson arranged to escort them, and Edmund helped Yi Chen prepare for the trip, ending with the pair entering an expensive lamp shop.

• The supervisor explained that Yi Chen, Edmund, and their teammates had to search the abandoned Twilight Clinic for the final bottle of Twilight Silver Liquid or photograph the clinic if it was missing.
• Yi Chen questioned the accuracy of the False Moon report, and the supervisor admitted that confidential details had been removed and the account modified.
• Professor Chamberson confronted Supervisor Aige about sending the newcomers on a potentially dangerous mission, then decided to escort the team himself.
• Edmund bought supplies for the journey and urged Yi Chen to replace his worn civilian Kerosene Lamp.
• Yi Chen and Edmund entered Helios' Sacred Fire, where Yi Chen saw the high prices and considered leaving.

Yi Chen and his squad prepared for a high-difficulty mission to Vinal City, where Edmund bought him a costly Kerosene Lamp and explained the organization’s secret medicines during the journey. The carriage continued toward their destination as Yi Chen learned how Doctors and Clinics produced these powerful but risky treatments.

• Edmund bought Yi Chen the crow-decorated Kerosene Lamp called The Crow's Night and asked him to repay half its cost after the mission.
• Julianna tied Yi Chen's long hair into a bun, and Edmund suggested he upgrade his hand axe if the squad found valuable materials.
• Edmund treated the squad to a day of meals and massages before they submitted their mission documents at the Gentleman Hall.
• The squad boarded an organization carriage and set out for Vinal City, a 51-kilometer journey expected to take three and a half hours.
• Yi Chen asked what secret medicine was, and Edmund explained how Doctors and Clinics produced healing, combat, and potential medicines from Sick Ones, along with their dangers.

Yi Chen and Edmund discussed the secret medicine, clinic practices, and the possibility that it was connected to the False Moon Incident. Their carriage crossed the ruined Vinal City, where Yi Chen sensed hidden observers, before reaching the Twilight Clinic outside the city.

• Yi Chen questioned Edmund about whether the secret medicine’s ingredients and the False Moon Incident were connected, and Edmund explained that clinics obtained Sick Ones through regulated hunts.
• Yi Chen and Little Grape discussed the mission and agreed that Little Grape would help spot Sick Ones and receive the grapes of those they killed.
• Edmund chose to drive the carriage directly through Vinal City so the group could assess the danger on the way to the Twilight Clinic.
• As the carriage crossed the ruined city, Little Grape detected up to three Sources of Peeping watching from the shadows, and Yi Chen warned the others.
• The carriage left Vinal City and reached the countryside near the hilltop Twilight Clinic.

Yi Chen and his teammates explored the abandoned Twilight Clinic, finding its main building eerily empty and its sealed tower filled with signs of brutal experiments. The chapter left Yi Chen wondering why the clinic had tortured the Sick Ones to produce Twilight Silver Liquid.

• The coachman dropped Yi Chen, Edmund, Dagobert, and Julianna at the mountain road and told them where to meet after the mission.
• Dagobert forced open the clinic’s iron gate, and the team entered Twilight Clinic together.
• The team explored the three-story main building and found its treatment areas, wards, operating rooms, and storage rooms, but no place related to Secret Medicine.
• The team discovered a sealed tower in the backyard and entered its destroyed Material Refining Area.
• Yi Chen examined the bloodstained torture equipment and wondered why the clinic had used such cruel methods to extract materials from the Sick Ones.

During their first night at the Twilight Clinic, Yi Chen and Edmund woke to find Dagobert and Julianna missing as the moon appeared and Gray Fog began transforming the building. A sound like a nurse’s high heels approached their room as the clinic entered a dangerous Gray Erosion.

• The four explorers settled into an apprentice room on the third floor, and Edmund told Yi Chen he could sleep instead of taking a watch shift.
• At midnight, the moon emerged through the fog, and Gray Fog spread through the clinic as strange noises came from the second-floor Hospital Ward.
• Yi Chen and Edmund awoke to discover that Dagobert and Julianna had disappeared without opening the room’s door.
• Yi Chen spotted the moon through a shard of glass, and he and Edmund suspected the False Moon Incident’s remnant had returned.
• Gray Fog seeped into their room, prompting Yi Chen to identify the danger as Gray Erosion.
• High heels clicked outside their door, cutting off Yi Chen’s explanation of Gray Erosion.

Yi Chen and Edmund hid from a deformed Female Doctor patrolling the clinic and decided to search for their missing teammates, Dagobert and the others. As they prepared to leave the rooftop, a huge shadow with an eyeball in a liquid tank appeared at the entrance, and Little Grape excitedly called out, “Grape!”

• Yi Chen sent Little Grape to inspect the neighboring dormitory from the window without leaving his body.
• Little Grape saw that the Female Doctor was a severed lower body attached to an infusion stand, with a hair-covered head impaled above it.
• Edmund identified the creature as a Non-Normality Patient and guessed that the clinic’s graying had reached its later stages after a past battle.
• Yi Chen and Edmund escaped through a window to the rooftop while the Female Doctor searched their empty dormitory.
• Yi Chen and Edmund prepared to descend into the clinic and look for Dagobert and the others, but a huge shadow with an eyeball in a liquid tank appeared at the rooftop entrance.
• Little Grape emerged from Yi Chen’s shoulder and excitedly shouted, “Grape!”

Yi Chen and Edmund confronted the Male Doctor, Francisco Holt, on the rooftop. Yi Chen exposed the Pathogen inside Francisco’s heart monitor, and Edmund destroyed it with a silver bullet.

• Edmund prepared to fight Francisco Holt while Yi Chen rushed forward to engage him.
• Yi Chen used Visual Lock-on to stun Francisco, and Little Grape caught and ate the eyeball from his shattered fluid tank.
• Yi Chen cut into Francisco’s back and used Plant Root Tendrils to locate the Pathogen sealed inside his heart monitor.
• Francisco recovered, struck Yi Chen with an electrified palm, and sent him flying toward the rooftop’s edge.
• Yi Chen pointed out Francisco’s chest monitor, allowing Edmund to shoot it and corrode the Pathogen with a Silver Bullet.

Yi Chen and Edmund confirmed that the Male Doctor was dead, then Yi Chen absorbed the Sick One’s brain to replenish his mental strength and gain fragmented memories. They decided to hunt isolated Sick Ones during their nighttime exploration before heading down to investigate the clinic.

• Yi Chen climbed back onto the rooftop after Edmund shot the Male Doctor, and his self-repairing coat healed the damage from the attack.
• Yi Chen explained that he had deliberately taken the Male Doctor’s palm strike so Edmund could kill him, and Edmund followed him to examine the corpse.
• Yi Chen opened the corpse’s chest and absorbed its brain through plant tendrils, replenishing his mental strength and receiving unclear fragments of memories from the False Moon Incident.
• Yi Chen told Edmund they should kill isolated Sick Ones to use their brains, while Edmund collected the Male Doctor’s skin and Pathogen tissue for rewards.
• Yi Chen and Edmund climbed down to the first floor to investigate the clinic.

Yi Chen and Edmund discovered that the clinic had transformed into a living structure within a moon-created Parallel Space, and learned that Mr. Lee wanted to meet them. With the nurse threatening to trap and pursue them if they refused, Yi Chen agreed to follow her into the blood-red elevator.

• Yi Chen and Edmund reasoned that the moon had drawn them into a Parallel Space where the clinic was undergoing severe graying.
• They entered the clinic and found its walls corrupted, the elevator restored, and a bloodied nurse waiting at the counter.
• The nurse said Mr. Lee, the clinic's leader and an existence close to the 'Moon Scar,' had watched their actions and demanded a meeting.
• Yi Chen concluded that meeting Mr. Lee was their only chance of survival and offered to handle the encounter.
• Yi Chen agreed to follow the nurse, who limped into an elevator with buttons shaped like fleshy bubbles and marked with negative numbers.

Yi Chen and Edmund reached Mr. Lee in the clinic’s deepest underground ward and learned that he had used the Twilight Silver Liquid to survive and create the Moonlight Clinic. After the nurse injected them with a Plague Conversion Agent, Mr. Lee offered freedom, the empty bottle, and an antidote in exchange for intact Moon Mark skin collected from Moonification Disease Patients in Vinal City.

• The nurse led Yi Chen and Edmund through a maze of rats on Underground Level Thirteen to Mr. Lee’s ward.
• Yi Chen recognized Mr. Lee’s Moon Mark and Gentleman’s Attire, while Mr. Lee revealed that he had used all the Twilight Silver Liquid.
• Mr. Lee offered the two men three rewards if they completed a task, and the nurse injected them with a Plague Conversion Agent that would take effect within a week.
• Yi Chen introduced himself as William Berens and agreed to collect intact Moon Mark skin from Moonification Disease Patients in Vinal City.
• Mr. Lee told Yi Chen and Edmund to return to the dormitory, sleep, and prepare to go back to the Surface Layer.

Yi Chen and Edmund learned that sleep and moonlight could transfer them between worlds, while Little Grape revealed it had swallowed Yi Chen’s pathogen injection. The next morning, the team chose to stay in Vinal City and hunt the Moonified to gain leverage against Mr. Lee and secure a real antidote.

• After Edmund fell asleep, moonlight transferred him back to the Surface Layer, and Yi Chen inferred that sleep and moonlight triggered the transition.
• Little Grape revealed that it had swallowed the pathogen injected into Yi Chen, and Yi Chen promised it a grape feast if they killed Mr. Lee.
• Yi Chen bathed in moonlight and considered that the clinic’s problems might connect to the former False Moon Incident and the organization’s intentions.
• Julianna urged the team to abandon the mission and seek medical help, but Yi Chen argued that collecting the remaining Moon Skin would give them leverage over Mr. Lee.
• Edmund agreed to hunt the Moonified with the team, and Julianna warned him she would kill him if he showed signs of disease.

Yi Chen and his team entered Vinal City to hunt Moonified survivors and followed signs of activity into the sewers, where they met an elderly Moonified man guarding a Chihuahua. Yi Chen uncovered the man’s connection to the Old John Theater, but the encounter ended with a Silver Bullet striking the back of his head.

• Edmund assessed the Moonified threat in Vinal City, and the team used Little Grape to locate watchers near the Old John Theater before slipping into the sewers.
• The team found fresh blood trails and followed them to a hidden dwelling behind a rusted Iron Gate.
• Yi Chen sat by a bonfire with an elderly man who roasted corpses and fed the meat to his Chihuahua, Millet.
• The old man told Yi Chen that survivors were gathering at the Old John Theater for a Leader Selection and might leave the city together afterward.
• Yi Chen accused the old man of being a theater member assigned to watch the sewers, and a Silver Bullet struck the back of the man’s head.

Yi Chen and his companions fought the Moonified old man and killed him by removing the skin bearing his Moon Mark. Yi Chen absorbed the Cerebral Fluid from the corpse and gained memories and information about the Old John Theater and the Moonified.

• Edmund shot the old man with silver bullets, but the man was immune to silver and continued roasting meat with his dog, Milly.
• The old man merged Milly into his right arm and attacked Yi Chen, while Dagobert and Miss Anna struck him from behind.
• The old man fled along the ceiling, but Edmund shot through his leg and Yi Chen pursued him.
• Yi Chen split the old man's dog-like arm with an axe and used Mental Power to blank his consciousness.
• Miss Anna cut away the skin bearing the Moon Mark, killing the old man, and Yi Chen absorbed Cerebral Fluid from his brain to obtain memories and information.