Chapter 2: Escape from the hospital

“…Ugh…”

My back hurt.

Cover view~

No, every time my mind started to clear, it wasn’t just my back, but my whole body felt stiff and heavy.

I was sure I was about to start the game, but my vision flashed, and I lost consciousness.

I slowly got up while retracing my memories.

“…Where is this…?”

The scene before me took my breath away.

The interior of an old and filthy hospital room filled my view.

The wallpaper was peeling off, and even on the intact walls, there were red handprints.

The cold, damp air, the sharp smell of disinfectant, and the metallic scent of iron filled my nose.

In the midst of that horrible scene, I was lying on the floor.

This place seemed like an abandoned, run-down hospital.

“Could it be…?”

Just seeing this scene almost made me faint, but the reason my mind went blank was something else.

I swallowed nervously and looked behind me.

If what I thought was true, then surely—

“There it is…”

Just as I expected, there was a flashlight behind me.

I was sure of it.

This was undoubtedly the starting point of the game I was playing, ‘Gyeidamrok’.

The protagonist starts in an abandoned hospital room.

A scene I’d seen dozens of times on the screen.

Then, a translucent message window appeared in front of my eyes.

[Escape the hospital.]

It was a notification announcing the harsh reality that I had entered the game.

‘Why… now…?’

Why, after playing this game hundreds or even thousands of times, did something like this happen while I was playing?

Along with the feeling of unfairness, fear surged up because I knew what was coming.

My hands and feet went cold, and my heart was racing madly.

My hand holding the flashlight was trembling.

Screech—

The sound of an old iron door opening came from down the hallway.

And then, the sound of something dragging.

It was unmistakable.

The first monster of the game, ‘The Nurse’, was coming.

“Oh, it’s coming…!”

I looked around frantically and tried to crawl under the bed.

But the game and reality were different.

My body, frozen with fear, wouldn’t move as I wished, and the gap under the bed was narrower than I had imagined.

Clank!

The hospital room door slammed open, and finally, it appeared.

The monster, the nurse, had its head cut off.

The corpse, wearing an old nurse’s uniform, moved nonchalantly despite having no head.

In one hand, it held a rusty scalpel, and with the other, it groped the wall and air as it approached.

The headless monster couldn’t see or hear, but the moment its hand touched me, I would be finished.

“Oh, don’t come!”

I prayed it wouldn’t come this way and staggered backward.

My back hit the wall, but the nurse didn’t stop and slowly kept approaching.

“I have to go, I have to go… please…”

I struck my stiff thighs with my fists out of fear.

I had to run now.

Even though the nurse was blocking the way, I had to squeeze past it, even if it meant taking a stab.

“Arrghhh!”

I gathered my courage, closed my eyes, and charged toward the nurse!

I expected the horrible pain of being stabbed by the sharp scalpel and screamed.

…But nothing happened.

Instead, I heard a loud ‘thud!’ sound.

I barely opened my eyes, and the nurse monster was lying far away, twitching slightly.

“…Huh?”

Did I send it flying that far?

I stared blankly at the scene.

The nurse monster struggled to get up for a moment before collapsing again.

“Is, is it dead?”

I tried to say it was dead, but then I closed my mouth.

I was afraid of raising an unnecessary flag and having it suddenly spring back to life.

Just in case, I picked up the scalpel the nurse had dropped and quickly rushed out of the hospital room.

I didn’t want to be in the same place as that thing.

“But how could that nurse…”

Did I just knock it out with my body slam?

Normally, this game, ‘Gyeidamrok’, was a horror game, but you could fight against the monsters.

However, that was only possible when the right combination of ‘items’, ‘strategies’, and ‘stats’ were in place.

And then, a word flashed in my mind like lightning.

“Cheat… cheat mode!”

The cheat mode I applied before starting the game.

Among those cheats, there was one that increased your stats by a hundred times.

“Then…”

I tried gripping the nearby doorknob tightly as an experiment.

Creeeek…

The metal doorknob made a strange noise as it bent to the shape of my fingers.

“…It’s real…”

It made sense that the nurse monster was knocked out.

Once I confirmed that cheat mode was active, I felt a bit of relief, but still, the eerie visuals of the hospital sent chills down my spine.

In fact, this was the game’s tutorial.

That is, I had never escaped this hospital before.

The thought that something even more terrifying than that nurse monster might be wandering around made it impossible for me to lower my guard.

“It’s okay… I’m sure if I use various cheats…”

I muttered to myself as I relied on the flashlight and moved through the dark hospital.

My voice, trying to comfort myself, trembled terribly.

I walked through the hospital, keeping my posture low.

After passing many hospital rooms, I saw a staircase.

A map of the hospital was pinned to the wall next to the stairs.

“Now, I’m on the third floor… just two floors down…”

I glanced down at the bottom of the stairs.

Was it my intuition?

An ominous feeling slowly crept up from the lower floors.

‘There were other cheats too…’

I desperately tried to recall the other cheats that were included in cheat mode.

Stats, invisibility, and a cheat to show the location of the monstrosities.

‘Right, the map!’

When I thought of the map, a window that would normally appear in the game by pressing the “M” key appeared in my mind.

A semi-transparent map, just like in the game, spread out in front of me.

With the hospital’s layout, red dots began to appear.

‘Not many…’

Since it was a tutorial, there was only one red dot per floor.

The red dot on the third floor was not moving.

It was the nurse monstrosity I had knocked down.

As I checked the red dot’s location, I cautiously descended the stairs.

‘Second floor… Ah.’

As expected, they weren’t going to let me escape so easily.

The path from the second floor to the first floor was blocked by a pile of stones.

Looking at the map, I could see that the stairs I was on were the central stairs, and to go down to the first floor, I had to take the emergency stairs.

“Ugh…”

So, I had to roam around the second floor.

The second floor was even more blood-soaked than the third.

I thought I might have gotten used to the smell of blood on the third floor, but the unpleasant stench took my breath away again.

Still, thanks to the map, I was able to find the emergency stairs without encountering any red dots.

However, the entrance to the stairs was blocked by a tightly locked iron door.

Clunk, clunk.

I tried turning the doorknob, but the door was firmly locked.

In a horror game, I would have been searching for a key, but…

‘…Should I put a little more force?’

Recalling how I had bent the doorknob earlier, I decided to put just a tiny bit more force and pulled on the door.

Creak!

Crash!

The door shattered at the hinges and came off entirely.

It didn’t open as easily as I thought, so I applied a bit more force, and this happened.

I awkwardly smiled and propped the broken door against the hallway wall.

I could see the stairs down to the first floor and, checking the map, I slowly descended.

The red dot was stopped near the front door.

It seemed to be a kind of monstrosity that I would have to face in order to escape.

‘…Please, let it be weak like the nurse monstrosity…’

I carefully hid and observed the red dot’s location.

The scene of the first-floor lobby came into view.

A large space, high ceilings, broken glass scattered on the floor.

And something wearing a doctor’s gown.

“…What is that…”

It looked to be over 2 meters tall.

It was wearing a tattered doctor’s gown soaked in blood, and its face was hidden behind a torn surgical mask.

In its hand, it held an unreasonably large bone saw.

It was a monstrosity that would break your will to fight just by looking at it.

“No, no…”

There was no need to fight.

The nurse monstrosity hadn’t been made to fight either.

Since it was a tutorial, the right strategy was to hide and run away, avoiding the monstrosity’s gaze.

‘But if it’s guarding the front door like that…’

At that moment, I noticed unusually large stones scattered on the floor, clearly out of place.

A few games came to mind.

In those games, you would throw stones to make noise and lure enemies away.

Was this a tutorial to teach me that?

“…Alright.”

I picked up a stone from the ground, being careful not to be seen, and threw it towards the back of the doctor, aiming for the farthest part from the front door.

“Whoosh.”

Whoosh!

Due to my poor aim and failed strength control, the stone flew directly at the doctor’s head.

Thud!

The stone hit the doctor’s head, and it exploded like it had been hit by a shotgun.

Like a puppet with its strings cut, the monstrosity’s body collapsed to the floor.

“…Okay.”

I clenched my fists, pretending it was intentional, and walked towards the front door.

[Quest completed.]

[You have achieved an impossible feat.]

[Your rewards have increased.]