CH 3

QiLeren wasted no time after the drawer was pulled open, swinging a fist towards the murderer’s general crotch area without even a glance at his face. The murderer let out a gargle of pain at the unexpected assault, toppling over onto the ground as his chainsaw did likewise.

This was his chance! QiLeren scrambled out from his hiding spot under the counter, intent on leaving as soon as possible only to stumble from the numbness that radiated from his left leg. His heart skipped a beat; he hadn’t spent too long under the counter, but in the wake of the tension and events that had unfolded he had forgotten to shift his position.

In the short seconds that QiLeren faltered, he made eye contact with the murderer; a young man with a buzz cut, clad in, as expected, prison garb. His face was surprisingly handsome, marred only by the criss-crossing wounds that covered half his face and his pained expression.

The murderer could not yet stand after such an attack but his hand had already found the previously abandoned chainsaw, roaring as it drew near to QiLeren’s body. QiLeren forced down the discomfort in his leg as he turned on his heels, bolted past the front counter and out into the corridor. All over the glass doors were bloodied handprints of dying struggles, the owner of which was lying on the ground nearby. Entrails spilled out of the gaping hole in his stomach, having trailed after him as he crawled no more than a metre before his eventual demise.

QiLeren pressed on, not sparing a second glance at the previous victim. He doubled back up the stairs; this was obviously a dimension separate from the normal world. Based on his observations of the infusion hall, the chances of the entrance of the hospital being open was infinitely close to zero. It would be wiser to hide somewhere inside the hospital first to buy some time.

The second he passed the doors, two notifications surfaced in his mind:

[Player QiLeren has completed Tutorial Quest 2: Leaving the Infusion Hall]

[Tutorial Quest 3: Surviving Until Dawn]

His escape went smoother than he had ever dared to imagine. By the time QiLeren came back to his senses enough to stop running, he had already reached the B block outpatient lobby on the fourth floor. The infusion hall was on the first floor in A block. If he played his cards right, the murderer wouldn’t be able to find him for a week at least. Finally relieved of the tension, QiLeren slumped onto the floor, face in his hands as a wide grin overcame his face. His heart rate hadn’t had time to return to normal, but the giddy euphoria of having survived washed over him nonetheless.

Alive. He was still alive.

The thought ran through his mind like a broken record as he spent a few minutes catching his breath. Eventually, he forced himself up to a standing position and set out to find some water. The immediate danger was over (at least for now), but there were still too many mysteries and questions for him to investigate. The notifications from before stood out in his memory, signifying that this was no longer the world he lived in.

Card slots…skill cards…

QiLeren unconsciously patted his hip with one hand at the memory, discovering a wide belt with two ports around the size of playing cards.

Where had he heard the name ‘Law of S/L’ before?

As he pondered over this, the familiar sight of an inventory screen surfaced in the depths of his mind. A small icon of a card in the first inventory slot drew his attention, materialising in his hand with a mere thought.

[Law of S/L] (Binding skill card): Allows the holder to create a save file at the position in which this skill is activated. If the holder experiences a fatal wound or death within a time limit of 10 second(s), they will returned to a specific location and state as per the save file and a subsequent countdown will triggered immediately. Save files will expire after 10 second(s) if unused. A save file may be used 3 time(s), after which this skill will be subject to a cooldown of 1 hour(s). If you wanna use this skill, you’re gonna have to die!

“…” Even a veteran gamer like QiLeren was taken aback by the sheer audacity of the skill description. It was one of those skills that seems utterly broken at first glance but even just a second of evaluation would reveal it to have a cripplingly niche useability. It may be called “Law of S/L”, but the so-called save-load features clearly wouldn’t affect the flow of time and would just return his body to the way it was instead. The most infuriating part was that he had to die within ten seconds.

He had to die! How was he meant to know when he was going to die? What if he didn’t die within ten seconds? Would he have to finish up the job himself? Was this skill trying to instigate creative suicides?!

Even worse was the possibility of dying on the eleventh second. Dying for real because the save file expired a second earlier was not something he wanted to experience. Basically, this was a completely useless skill that…hm, maybe not completely useless. Maybe he could save at the top of a building and experience the feeling of jumping off of it or something. QiLeren considered these options jokingly to himself, because why would a reasonable person like him do something as stupid as…

Damn, he actually wanted to try it. Not because he was suicidal or anything, but to test the skill. He lined the card up with the port on his belt and activated it.

It was surprisingly anticlimactic, with the only change being that he was now aware of a newfound ability to place save files below himself that last ten seconds.

Maybe it’d be best to take a minute and reorganise his thoughts. QiLeren strolled into an empty ENT room, picking up a pen and a notepad to jot down any clues that came to mind. The blank notepad looked extremely old – possibly a few decades old – with its tanned cover and yellowing pages. There were no markings other than faintly ruled lines, not even a name. Closing the door, QiLeren sketched a rough blueprint of the hospital from memory.

Thank the heavens for his degree in interior design. Without it, he’d be nowhere as perceptive about the layout of a building. He worked as just a freelance interior designer after graduating, but it provided more than enough money to live comfortably.

QiLeren could recall from his few visits that the outpatient area in this hospital was made up of two blocks with six floors each, A and B. These came together in the middle to form a hyperbola from a bird’s-eye view. There were two ways to travel from one block to the other: the first, exiting A block and walking around the buildings to enter B block, and; the second, crossing the suspended hallway that connected the two buildings on the third level. If his memory served him correctly then it was via this hallway that he first entered B block. The chilling air had been thick with wispy white fog and held no trace of warmth even in direct sunlight.

The prompt that required him to survive until dawn was very likely the last quest. If he were to equate his current situation to that of a survival horror game, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that timed quests like this were going to be filled with all sorts of danger. From what it looked like, this hospital had ghosts and also chainsaw-wielding murderers. The ghosts were evidently killable since that murderer had killed one with his chainsaw, which meant that physical attacks worked on ghosts…unless the chainsaw was special in some way?

QiLeren circled the heading “Ways to kill ghosts” and decided to test out his theory on the next ghost he came across. There’s no way he’d make it all the way to dawn without seeing another ghost, especially not with his luck. He glanced at his watch: quarter past four in the afternoon. Days in November were among some of the shortest, so QiLeren estimated that he had another hour and a half before nightfall.

Nightfall in horror games brought terrible danger. If there were already ghosts around in the day, it’d only get worse at night – he did not have much time left.

Food, water, weaponry, first-aid supplies, a way to kill ghosts, a detailed map of the hospital, something to combat the fog… QiLeren wrote down a long list of things he needed, suddenly remembering that he had not yet attempted to contact the outside world. His laptop was nowhere to be seen (probably left behind on the bus or ambulance), but his phone was still on his person. Unfortunately, there was no signal.

Having expected this, QiLeren wasn’t overly disappointed. He tentatively tried to store the notepad inside the inventory, finding that it disappeared out of his hands and into the grid-like interface.

Guess that’s the problem of luggage solved. QiLeren readied himself to leave and opened the door. A pair of wild eyes that belonged to someone slinking against the wall met his, ceasing their erratic movements in an instant.

“Ahhhhh———–!!!”