Warning: This chapter contains scenes of violence that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

Survive.jpg

Actually, Ranen wanted to say that even if the nurses knocked as hard as they could outside, they wouldn’t be able to get in. But for some reason, the thought that they probably wouldn’t survive the night made his desire to explain drop sharply.

What’s the point of explaining? In this damned world, there’s no hope to be seen.

With this thought, Ranen’s previously agitated emotions calmed down. He sat calmly on the edge of the bed and even patted the space beside him, inviting the poor young man to join him.

Thinking the young man was too scared to move, Ranen was surprised when the young man immediately stood up and sat down beside him as soon as he made the gesture.

The druid: ? His body didn’t obey him.

Before the druid could react, the noise from outside banging on the door had ceased.

The room was silent, and the druid let out a quiet sigh of relief. “Is it over?”

“Not yet,” Ranen said calmly. “The night is far from over. As long as the sun hasn’t come up, this hospital is anything but safe.”

As if to confirm his words, scratching noises came from the wall next door.

The druid flinched violently.

“What are you doing?”

“I-I-I can’t stand that kind of noise!” The druid swallowed nervously and looked towards the wall. “Could she be trying to come through from the next room?!”

Ranen replied nonchalantly, “As long as the door isn’t opened voluntarily, the nurses won’t get in. As for next door…”

He paused, and the druid asked hopefully, “Maybe the people next door are scared and want to seek help from us.”

“That’s unlikely.”

“Ah? Why not?”

Ranen tilted his head, speaking in a tone as if discussing the weather, and said, “Because at this time last night, the people next door were already dragged out and killed by the front desk nurse.”

He recalled something and delivered another blow to the druid’s fragile psyche: “You might have even seen their remains since the front desk nurse seems to have a particular taste for patients.”

“Huh?” The druid suddenly remembered the chicken feet that the front desk nurse had been gnawing on earlier.

The druid: [shocked]

“So, the next-door patient…”

“Is no longer the original patient,” Ranen said, his mind conjuring up images of what he had seen over the past few nights. Exhausted both physically and mentally, the scenes of the next-door patient being torn apart and chewed like food by the nurse were vivid in his mind. Any sane person would be driven mad by such sights in this environment; it was a feat that he could still maintain normal conversation.

Everyone’s reaction to extreme fear varies. Some become hysterical, others become numb. Ranen appeared calm on the surface, but in reality, he had already disregarded life and death, a state commonly known as “giving up.”

As long as I’m not afraid of death, no one can do anything to me.jpg

While they were discussing, the scratching sounds on the wall grew louder and clearer. It was as if the wall was becoming increasingly thin, with visible dust accumulating and the wall itself growing increasingly transparent.

Damn it! This is a concrete wall!

Finally, under the druid’s terrified gaze, a hole was chiseled out of the wall.

An eye appeared through the hole, its bloodshot pupil fixed intently on Ranen, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. The eye was filled with bloodlust and obsession.

“Ran… Ranen… Ranen…”

She, or rather it, began to pound on the existing hole, trying to widen it and force its way through.

The druid’s mind was bombarded with system alert sounds, his sanity rapidly declining. But fortunately, he managed to hold on, grabbing Ranen’s wrist: “Run! It’s coming in! We’re on the third floor; jump out the window…”

He hadn’t finished speaking when he saw Ranen shake his head and draw back the curtain.

Outside the glass window, the red-haired nurse was hanging upside down, her limbs twisted in unnatural directions. Seeing Ranen pull back the curtain, her bloodied mouth stretched into a wide, grotesque smile.

“Ranen… Mr. Ranen, I love you. Please open the window… okay?”

“#￥%…%!” The druid couldn’t help but mutter a string of expletives.

So she isn’t giving up when she isn’t at the door—she is waiting at the window!

If they open the window, and before they can jump out…

The druid shuddered with fear. High-level instances truly lived up to their reputation. These terrifying monsters not only had frightening appearances but also possessed intelligence comparable to humans! They even set traps to catch their prey!

The monster next door continued to slam against the wall. The hole was getting larger, and Ranen could even faintly see part of the monster’s body on the other side. A strong, foul stench of rotting flesh wafted through from next door.

The monster stood behind the hole in the wall. Ranen could see part of its body—‘it’ was still wearing the hospital-issued uniform, its exposed skin had a gelatinous texture, sparse hair covered with cracks, and its eyes were completely black, with no sclera visible.

It no longer looked quite human.

Half of its body had already squeezed into the room.

“It’s over. I’m probably going to meet my end here,” the druid murmured, glancing at Ranen. He saw that the young man in the hospital uniform was calmly looking at him, seemingly uninterested in offering any help.

In fact, the young man remained composed, sitting calmly on the edge of the bed, as if he hadn’t noticed the deadly danger and was merely annoyed at being disturbed from his rest.

Indeed, it was calmness. The monsters outside the wall and window were all fixated on him, like obsessive fans, desperate to get in just to gain his attention. What kind of creature could attract such a fervent following?

The druid felt his head becoming a bit fuzzy. The sanity loss notifications on the system panel kept refreshing. To maintain the immersive experience of the game, the druid hadn’t set the sanity threshold too high. In this game, losing sanity too quickly could lead to temporary insanity, which manifested as the player briefly losing control over their body and performing actions they would later find inexplicable and socially damaging.

[Temporary Insanity: Frenzy]

Just like now, the druid’s rational mind told him that there was a seemingly non-human boss present, and the two monsters outside were clearly targeting him as well. It was likely they wouldn’t mind tearing him apart in the process. But if he immediately latched onto the boss’s leg, he might still have a slim chance of survival.

But the frenzy told him: “Forget that! I’m going to take them on!”

The druid charged forward, unable to understand why he was so enraged. He roared and attacked the monster in the hospital uniform that had already entered the room, starting with a series of wild punches.

Ranen: …

The druid’s punches seemed ineffective and couldn’t breach the monster’s defenses, while the monster could easily strike him to the point of making him vomit blood. But at this moment, the player’s stubbornness left no room for retreat. Embracing the idea of dying together as a form of revenge, the druid used all his strength, even resorting to biting, to hold onto the monster in the hospital uniform.

The monster, finally growing impatient, used its fang-filled mandibles to pierce through his chest. Blood flowed everywhere, and the druid, exhausted and unable to continue fighting, collapsed on the ground.

He met Ranen’s puzzled gaze, which seemed to ask why he chose to fight a losing battle.

The druid didn’t know why, but this was his first and last death during the closed beta. He instinctively tried to do something.

The druid opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood. His internal organs had been mangled, and fragments of his organs fell from his mouth. Despite this, he still clung tightly to the monster’s leg, desperately trying to prevent it from approaching Ranen.

“Survive.”

He felt that he must have looked incredibly heroic saying this.

Then, with a tilt of his head, the druid contributed his first death.

For the first time, Ranen’s normally impassive face showed a trace of emotion.

One never knows when they might be moved by the brilliance of humanity.

Ranen had originally given up on his desire to survive, but at this moment, a crack appeared in his closed-off heart due to the death of a stranger.

He saved the druid simply because it seemed too lonely for someone to die alone. Yet this stranger seemed never to have given up hope for life. Even in the final moment of his life, the courage he displayed left Ranen feeling dizzy and ashamed.

The druid fought desperately to buy a little more time for himself, even though they hadn’t even exchanged names.

Ranen bowed his head, unable to see his expression. The monster in the hospital uniform seemed uninterested in the druid’s lifeless body on the ground, stumbling persistently towards Ranen with outstretched hands.

“Ranen…”

So despicable.

Ranen sighed. How could he easily give up his own life?

He stood up, taking a step back to avoid the monster’s hand. His retreat put him right by the window, with the red-haired nurse’s figure pressed against the glass window behind him.

“There’s a rule in the hospital. A patient’s room cannot be entered without the patient’s permission,” Ranen said quietly, as if explaining to no one in particular. The monster in the hospital uniform seemed to sense the threat and suddenly accelerated, trying to pounce on Ranen by the bed.

Ranen pushed open the window with force: “Please, come in, Miss Nurse.”

The red-haired nurse let out a high-pitched laugh. As soon as the glass window opened, a chill filled the room, and her long red hair fell across Ranen’s face. Her gaze greedily swept over Ranen before finally settling on the hospital uniform monster, who was trying to wrest the prey from her.

The two monsters locked eyes in mid-air, momentarily ignoring Ranen standing aside, and began to fight furiously.

The red-haired nurse’s limbs sprouted black bristles, and with her limbs on the ground, she resembled a spider. Her movement was extremely fast. In contrast, the monster in the hospital uniform had a rubber-like skin that provided excellent defense. Its pure black eyes fixated on the nurse, while its sharp claws left bloody scratches on her limbs.

The red-haired nurse, in pain, grew even more vengeful. She let out a long howl, her head splitting in two to reveal a massive mouth. Inside, her fangs savagely tore into the hospital uniform monster’s body, and blood and flesh splattered across the room. The walls and bed were marked with the traces of their battle.

The only untouched area in the room was the space where Ranen stood. It was as if both monsters had tacitly avoided that spot, or were perhaps wary of it, leaving Ranen completely clean.

The young man with the inhuman appearance calmly observed the monsters’ fight, as if watching a play staged just for him, his gaze serene and unperturbed.

The druid watched in stunned silence from the floor.

Yes, even though the character he was playing died, the game’s mechanics allow the player’s consciousness to persist for a short time.

He instinctively tried to activate the in-game recording function, only to realize he had never turned it off. Everything from the moment he entered the room was recorded.

The monsters’ fight was brutal. In the end, the red-haired nurse bit off the head of the hospital uniform monster, while the monster simultaneously pierced the nurse’s heart. Their twisted limbs were interlocked inside each other, and even in death, they could not separate.

At this moment, the sky outside began to lighten, turning gray.

The young man, who had been standing still with no reaction, finally moved his gaze towards the window and let out a long sigh.

“It’s dawn.”

The monster’s bodies lay between Ranen and the druid’ corpse. Ranen, expressionless, stepped over the two monster corpses as if they were insignificant leaves, and moved to the druid’ body, intending to close his eyes.

However, at that moment, the druid’ corpse vanished, leaving behind a small white translucent orb and a set of keys.

Upon seeing the small white orb, Ranen’s fingers suddenly acted on their own, driven by an inexplicable urge to grasp it. The orb reacted quickly, trying to escape, but Ranen’s swift reflexes allowed him to catch it in his palm.

*Crack.*

The small white orb was crushed, and at the same time, a voice echoed in his mind.

[Player Forum is now open]

Ranen: …?