Chapter 3: Getting on and off (1)

[You have completed the quest.]

[You have achieved an impossible feat.]

[Your rewards are increased.]

“Reward increase…”

I blankly read the messages.

Since I had never cleared the tutorial before, I didn’t even know how rewards were usually given.

There was even a message saying that the reward had been increased because of an impossible achievement.

“Impossible achievement?”

Seeing that message triggered a memory in my mind.

The grotesque creature in a doctor’s gown whose head I had shattered with a rock I threw.

It was an impossible achievement—if it hadn’t been for the cheat mode.

[Rewards have been granted.]

[Please check your status window.]

“…Status window?”

As I muttered, a semi-transparent window appeared before my eyes.

[Name: Kim Min-jun]

[Stats: Strength 5, Intelligence 7, Agility 5]

[Skills: Cheat Mode, Weak Spot Detection Lv.1]

The status window was simpler than I expected.

Maybe the skill Weak Spot Detection was the reward?

I wasn’t even planning to fight, so why did they give me such an aggressive skill?

I had gained a skill I didn’t even need.

I stood in front of the hospital’s main entrance.

I pushed hard against the rusty, barely-opening glass door.

Creeeaak—The door opened with a loud noise.

If that grotesque doctor creature had still been alive, it would’ve probably come charging after hearing this.

The cold, damp night air rushed inside.

“Damn it…”

Why does it have to be nighttime again?

I hesitated to step outside, but at least it seemed better than staying inside the hospital.

As I walked out of the hospital, it felt like I was finally shedding the heavy, oppressive atmosphere.

Compared to the hospital, the dimly lit streets with their sporadically flickering streetlights seemed almost heavenly.

Just in case, I opened the map.

“…Nothing… phew…”

Maybe this game had some sense of decency—there were no red dots on the map.

Yeah, if grotesque creatures were just wandering around everywhere, would this even be a game?

I felt a momentary sense of relief, but standing there on the dark street, I realized I had nowhere to go.

“No destination…”

For now, I decided to head toward the areas lit by streetlights because dark places scared me.

And then—

[Head home.]

“…Home, huh.”

The word home sounded incredibly reassuring.

No matter how heartless a horror game is, surely home must be a safe zone, right?

Just like before, I kept following the streetlights.

I wasn’t fully confident, but it felt like the right thing to do.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of dark places, or that empty shops or walls covered with bizarre graffiti scared me—

I just preferred well-lit paths.

Still gripping my flashlight tightly, I kept walking until I saw an apartment building.

Standing in front of it, a notification popped up:

[Quest Completed.]

[Reward Granted.]

I felt a weight in my pocket.

Reaching inside, I found a wallet, a smartphone, and a set of house keys.

The key had 201 written on it.

I grabbed the key, went up to the second floor, and inserted it into the door of unit 201.

Click.

With a cheerful sound, the door opened.

And inside was an incredibly ordinary apartment.

A studio with a bed, a computer, and a kitchen with a hanging aluminum pot that really caught the eye.

“Phew…”

Only then did I finally feel at ease.

I hadn’t realized how precious normalcy was until now.

The electricity worked, the water ran.

I turned on the hot water and instinctively started showering.

I washed off the stench of disinfectant and blood that clung to me from the hospital, scrubbing away the horrifying memories.

“Phew…”

After changing into fresh clothes, I opened the fridge and grabbed something to eat.

There wasn’t much, but there were eggs, so I fried one up and made soy sauce egg rice.

After warming up my body and filling my stomach, all the emotions I had been suppressing came rushing out.

“Shit…”

What had I even done to deserve this?

It’s not like I left negative reviews because I hated the game, nor did I kill dozens of grotesque creatures while playing.

So why did they possess me and drag me into this mess?

A wave of sorrow hit me.

Sure, I had activated cheat mode, but that was the only desperate move a coward like me could make.

If they wanted to possess someone, they should’ve gone after the guy who made the mode in the first place.

“Ugh…”

I stuffed spoonfuls of tear-soaked soy sauce egg rice into my mouth until I calmed down.

Once I did, one clear conclusion came to mind:

“I need information.”

What kind of world was this?

What exactly was the hospital I had been trapped in?

And what were these grotesque creatures?

I remembered the computer I had seen earlier.

Fortunately, it booted up properly and was connected to the internet.

I accessed a news website, but the articles felt eerily similar yet subtly different from those of the world I knew.

Mysterious disappearances.

Disasters.

There were those kinds of news articles too, but none of them mentioned anything crucial.

I changed my search terms and tried things like “grotesque” and “grotesque chronicles.”

Then, only one website popped up:

[Grotesque Gallery]

“Gallery?”

I hesitated, then clicked the link.

At some point, a rough-looking site I used to visit for game guides popped up.

Damn, another part-time job I need to avoid…

Why isn’t this place filtering out weirdness?

Update on the weird beings (1.7)

I’m really sorry, but is there anyone who can save me?

I want to move too…

Unlike the news, this site directly talked about the weird beings.

I felt like the information I was looking for might be here.

I slowly started reading through the posts on the Weird Gallery.

The information was helpful but also gave me a small sense of despair.

Not only were there weird beings like doctors and nurses, but this world also had various types of them—
Some couldn’t even be harmed by physical attacks.

There were even beings that could disguise themselves as humans and mimic human voices.

Just imagining it gave me chills.

I figured I’d end up suspecting everyone I met from now on.

There was also a somewhat interesting post: [ I want to move too… ]They said hardly any weird beings appeared around Seoul, and they wanted to work hard to afford even a small studio there…

But Seoul’s housing prices are basically a horror story themselves, lol.

Maybe I should join one of those companies that research the weird beings

Sounds like a new form of suicide, lol.

But honestly, there’s no other real solution.

“There’s a place where weird beings barely show up…?”

It caught my interest.

Of course, the best thing would be to find a way back to my original world, but there was no way yet.

For now, aiming for Seoul seemed like the most realistic goal.

“Seoul…”

Even in a world crawling with weird beings, in the end, money was still the problem.

I connected to the internet to look up the companies mentioned in the comments that research weird beings.

And way more company names popped up than I had expected.

Some of them were even considered major corporations in this world.

“Starting salary: 8 million won per month, 300,000 won per day.”

Looking at the suspiciously high salaries, I also checked what kind of jobs they were offering.

[Weird Being and Strange Area Exploration]

[Weird Being Management]

[Tester Manual]

[Playing Ball with Weird Beings] “Playing ball…?” Anyway, if the salary was high, the job descriptions were always shady and related to the weird beings. “Huh?” That’s when a part-time job caught my eye: [Simple Carrying Work]

[Requirement: Physically Healthy]

“Moving things?”

The job was simple.

Once the exploration team secured a weird area, you would move the items from that area.

It would be physically demanding since you had to move a lot of things, but there were no special requirements, and it explicitly said that encounters with weird beings would be very rare.

Since it was a job listing, I couldn’t completely trust it, but it sounded way better than the others.
“…Maybe I’ll try it just once.”

Now that I had the goal of getting a place in Seoul, I felt a bit more motivated.

***

‘…Should I go back?’

“Alright, everyone gather around! When the guys in suits come out, just follow them closely!”

A man dressed like a construction site foreman shouted.

Starting work immediately after the interview, huh.

Was this really one of those big companies?

Even small companies wouldn’t treat people like this.

They said it was part of the final interview, but honestly, I wasn’t sure.

“Why in front of a hotel though…”

“Wait, do weird beings show up here too? Isn’t this a famous hotel?”

I was sitting with other interviewees at the entrance of a hotel, wearing a yellow safety helmet.

Guests entering the hotel gave us strange looks as they passed by.

The other interviewees, like me, exchanged confused glances.

Now that I looked more carefully, the interviewees were very diverse.

There were scared-looking college students, desperate-looking individuals, and even some rough-looking middle-aged men.

How long did we wait?

Eventually, well-dressed people in suits started coming out through the revolving doors of the hotel.

Burly men who looked like bodyguards glanced at us and gestured.

“Alright! Get up! Follow them!”

The man in the work uniform shouted.

While hesitating and watching each other, we followed the men in black suits down into the hotel’s basement.

There should have been a parking garage underground, but the stairs kept going down endlessly.

“Isn’t this a bit too long?”

“Seriously… how many basement floors are there?”

The deeper we went, the dimmer the lights became and the more humid and damp the air felt.

Finally, we reached the bottom of the stairs.

There— “Wow…”

“What the hell is this place…?”

There was another hotel lobby.

It looked similar to the one above ground but had an older, more antique vibe and was well-maintained.

As we stared around in confusion, a translucent message window appeared in front of us: [Collect the required amount to escape.]

[0/20,000] The moment I turned around after reading the message, the stairs we had come down had vanished.