Chapter 1866: Chapter 1866

With a jarring creak, the birds in the woods behind Jenkins were startled into flight, their dark shapes scattering against the night sky. The moment he set foot on the hospital grounds, the night instantly turned to day. This was the sign that he had truly entered the temporal loop, a cycle that had repeated for nearly ten thousand years.

At the same time, the ice-cold Dead Silence Doll in his breast pocket seemed to lose all its properties in an instant. When he glanced down, he saw that even the intensity of its aura had diminished.

"Are the two Gizmos canceling each other out based on some principle of like consuming like?"

He pictured the Dead Silence Doll being trapped in the time loop forever, becoming a permanent part of the hospital. He immediately swore an oath that even if he was unlucky enough to be unable to escape in time, he would make sure to throw the doll beyond the fence.

He had barely taken a step forward when the four missing farmers, the farmstead manager, two dogs, and the Enchanter squad materialized out of thin air, standing just a short distance in front of him.

Once the time loop began, everything that happened in the previous cycle was reset. These people would believe they had just entered the hospital, unaware of how much time had truly passed for them.

"Mr. Williams? What are you doing here?"

Jenkins hadn't bothered to muffle the sound of his quick approach, so the squad's captain spotted him and recognized him at once. Dıscover more novels at novel[f]ire.net

"Mr. Yodel says that you did nothing wrong in that incident ten years ago. Also, if that wretched parrot of yours interrupts a church sermon with its nonsense one more time, he'll throw you both out. Mr. Yodel said that if I told you this, you'd know I'm the real Jenkins Williams, not an illusion or a fake."

"No problem. I confirm you are the real Mr. Williams."

"Good. I have new orders from the Church. You and your team are to escort these five ordinary people and four dogs out of the hospital."

With that, the Night Watchers didn't ask any questions. They simply surrounded the local farmers from Nolan, brandished their firearms, and the entire group pushed open the gate and walked out. Then, just as they had appeared, they vanished in an instant.

Anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped in the time loop and lose themselves would disappear immediately if they left the hospital grounds during a cycle. They would only reappear when the next cycle began. Unless someone could succeed in the mission to banish Bigges Hospital, they could never truly escape.

Whether it was the plan agreed upon by the Twelve Orthodox Churches or the private guidance Papa Oliver had given him, both instructed him to eliminate these distractions at the very beginning. This would allow the events inside the hospital to unfold according to the "script."

So far, three minutes and thirty-four seconds had passed since the cycle began. After confirming that everyone caught in the loop had vanished, Jenkins turned and walked toward the main building's entrance.

The story within the time loop primarily took place in the four-story building directly facing the hospital's main gate. The other parts of the hospital were irrelevant. So, before heading inside, Jenkins didn't bother to inspect his surroundings. Even now, he still disliked looking directly at those black auras.

Due to the nature of it being a psychiatric sanatorium, all the building's windows had their curtains drawn. The lighting inside was extremely dim. When Jenkins stepped into the lobby, two women in the desolate hall immediately turned to look at him.

"May I ask who you're looking for?"

The older of the two, a doctor, immediately stood up. She was destined to turn into a ghoul shortly. The woman spoke in an ancient language Jenkins didn't understand. Due to the partial memory loss that occurred after escaping the hospital, compounded by the language barrier with the "natives" here, the Church's information on this place was incomplete.

Jenkins was well aware of this situation. Both the Twelve Churches and Papa Oliver had advised him to ignore these hospital "natives." As long as the outsiders caught in the time loop didn't interact with them face-to-face, the seven inhabitants of the hospital wouldn't react much to their presence.

But Jenkins had no intention of doing that; he had his own plan. Waiting by the basement door was far too passive. Even Papa Oliver considered it a risky attempt—a gamble, but one with an enormous payoff if it succeeded.

Before that door opened in ten minutes, understanding everything that happened here was what Jenkins believed to be the best way to find the divinity.

The Church and Papa Oliver, of course, also understood that a thorough understanding of the hospital was key to finding clues about the divinity. But all past attempts had failed, and they worried that doing so would get Jenkins into trouble. But Jenkins was willing to take the risk for the divinity. Besides, the Church had no idea what he was truly capable of.

Although he didn't understand the ancient language, Jenkins didn't need to.

He directly activated his [Spiritual Communion] ability, looking into the middle-aged doctor's eyes. This ability belonged to the Green Life category, so it had been enhanced after Jenkins met the World Tree and successfully ascended. While he still couldn't understand the thoughts of that cunning cat of his, he was now capable of communicating with an unsuspecting ordinary person at close range.

"I'm looking for someone."

The voice appeared directly in the woman's mind. Because it was a communion of thought, she understood its meaning:

"May I ask who you are looking for..."

Only then did she realize the young man before her hadn't opened his mouth at all. She wanted to scream, but she quickly clamped a hand over her mouth and took a step back.

This was likely the term for supernaturals in this epoch. Jenkins had originally thought it would be something like "wizard" or "spellcaster."

He nodded, then turned his gaze to the younger woman who had also stood up and was watching him from a short distance away.

Up to the end of the eighteenth epoch, the Twelve Orthodox Churches had records of over a hundred explorations of the hospital, but in reality, some key questions remained unanswered. One of the more important ones was whether the seven inhabitants were supernaturals themselves.

Even the two people in the basement could not be confirmed as supernaturals. Within the looping time, although some of the seven had used items with supernatural power, not a single one had ever used a supernatural ability. The Church didn't fully understand the power system of this era. They couldn't judge someone as a supernatural just because they could throw a test tube that repelled ghouls.

The two women standing before Jenkins now were enveloped in the same black aura as the hospital. Even if one of them truly was a "mystic," the color of her aura would be completely obscured by the aura of the Gizmo.

Before he became the World Tree Seedling, Jenkins would never have dared to communicate directly with a creature shrouded in a black aura using [Spiritual Communion]. But now, he was much stronger. Furthermore, Bigges Hospital was a special case, which was why he dared to communicate this way.