A Survival Game Where You Have to Fall in Love with a Madman - Chapter 2

A cold, mechanical prompt rang out with a sharp ding-dong:

【Dear players, welcome to the Survival Game Instance: Horror Hospital.】

【Instance Background Introduction: In 1898, deep within the dense forests of a remote European border town, an off-white stone structure named “St. Maria’s Charity Hospital” was completed amidst a violent rainstorm. Funded initially by the Church under the guise of sheltering war orphans and the terminally ill, the hospital gradually deteriorated into a hotbed for forbidden experiments under the stewardship of its first director, Dr. Edgar von Klein.

Midnight operating tables, live organ transplants, psychic-contamination serums… The maniacal Dr. Klein firmly believed he could shatter the boundaries between life and death by fusing science with black magic. That was until All Hallows’ Eve in 1910, when a crimson fog of unknown origin completely swallowed the entire building. The flesh, blood, and lingering resentment of 132 patients and medical staff were permanently imprisoned inside. Since then, “St. Maria’s” became a coordinate wiped clean from the maps, leaving behind only a bizarre folklore whispered among commoners: “When the fog rises, the hospital manifests.” Please enjoy the game to your heart’s content!】

【Difficulty Rating: Rank A】

【Number of Participating Players in this Instance: 5】

【Time Limit: 12 Hours】

【Main Quest: Find the heart hidden away by Miss Nurse.】

【Side Quest: Search for the virus-curing agent.】

【Special Note: There are only two doses of the agent available.】

【Now, are you prepared to become a permanent inpatient of St. Maria’s?】

The blood in You Yan’s veins turned to ice.

This wasn’t some pre-recorded radio effect for an escape room puzzle. This was a literal… declaration of a death game.

He walked over and felt along the exit, only to discover that every single door had been completely sealed shut. His walkie-talkie remained utterly silent, offering nothing but dead air.

A survival game instance? How exactly did I end up in here?

Forget it, now isn’t the time to obsess over that.

Locking into his usual focused mindset with remarkable speed, You Yan began mapping out the details of the instance based on the system’s broadcast.

This Dr. Klein sounded like quite a piece of work. For patients and staff to survive under his direct supervision, they would have to be incredibly twisted and resilient. Then again, from a certain perspective, couldn’t Dr. Klein’s experiment with immortality be considered a success? Existing eternally as monsters within the St. Maria’s Charity Hospital instance even if they lacked autonomous free will was a form of immortality, wasn’t it?

You Yan moved slowly toward Xiao Lin’s corpse and squatted down.

His gaze scrutinized her wounds meticulously. He needed to assess what kind of ‘unknown’ hazards lurked within this instance. He had to be prepared; after all, he was just an ordinary escape room NPC. If he ran head-first into those monsters, whether he could actually survive would be entirely up to fate.

A dark, unidentified liquid was oozing from the cavity where Xiao Lin’s heart used to be, bubbling faintly. Her torso was also heavily marred by crimson lacerations. The monster evidently possessed incredibly sharp claws, though the patterns looked uncomfortably similar to marks gouged out by human fingernails.

According to the system’s prompt, the main quest was to locate the heart hidden by the nurse. It seemed the monsters in this instance would primarily consist of the hospital’s former medical staff and patients. Since there didn’t seem to be any other ‘unknown’ anomalies for now, navigating this would be a lot more straightforward.

Operating entirely alone in an instance like this was undeniably dangerous, but sitting around doing nothing was just waiting for death. Besides, he was already miserable enough having to work overtime on a Saturday, and now he was being forced to participate in some garbage death game.

The dim lights overhead flickered violently along the hallway. Aside from the shallow rhythm of his own breathing, the entire environment was dead quiet.

With every step You Yan took down the corridor, a faint, rhythmic creak echoed beneath his feet. Massive sheets of wallpaper had peeled away from the walls, exposing dark red patches of mold underneath molds that actually seemed to contract and throb in sync with the flickering lights.

Suddenly, a distinct tick-tock, tick-tock, shattered the silence of the corridor, accompanied by the eerie sound of a hundred children giggling as they chimed the time.

You Yan softened his footsteps, straining his ears to pinpoint the source of the sound. Just then, a low clatter-rattle of rolling wheels echoed from directly behind him. The noise drew closer and closer, finally grinding to a halt exactly five meters away.

With a completely blank expression, You Yan turned around.

A surgical gurney sat motionless in the darkened hallway. Various rusted surgical tools and apparatuses were neatly laid out across its surface, its corroded wheels emitting a grating screech against the floorboards.

A pair of pale decomposing hands gripped the pushing bar, followed by the manifestation of a twisted torso. The entity wore a white lab coat identical to You Yan’s, though half the flesh on its grayish-blue face was entirely missing, dripping bits of raw tissue onto the floor.

It stared fixedly at You Yan through two hollow, eyeless sockets.

You Yan stood his ground without moving an inch, his fingertips lightly tracing the small hemostatic forceps tucked inside his lab coat pocket an item he had casually swiped from the storage room right before stepping out.

The monster doctor didn’t seem to have any immediate intention to attack. It pried open its half-ruined jaw, its throat emitting a raspy, whistling sound like a broken bellows. “A new intern?” Its decomposing finger scraped across a bone saw resting on the gurney. “Slackers aren’t tolerated during ward rounds.”

The mold on the walls suddenly began to convulse violently as the children’s chiming voices spiked to an ear-splitting pitch. Out of the corner of his eye, You Yan noticed a thick, black sludge seeping out from underneath the gurney, snaking through the cracks of the floor tiles to form the distinct shape of a crucifix.

“I’m looking for an anatomical specimen misplaced by a nurse,” You Yan replied smoothly, glancing at the monster doctor’s faded ID badge. Without batting an eye, he stepped forward and ground his heel directly into the forming crucifix. The mold-stained sole of his shoe emitted a sharp, burning sizzle. “I recall reading that during the live-tissue transplantations you personally performed back then, the target hearts could remain viable for up to forty-nine minutes?”

The monster doctor’s cheekbone suddenly split open, spraying dozens of squirming maggots wrapped in foul, rancid mucus directly at him.

As You Yan tilted his upper body to dodge the spray, he reached out in one fluid motion and snatched the stainless-steel tray off the gurney. The metallic reflection of the polished tray revealed three nurses hovering completely upside down from the ceiling directly above him their snow-white uniforms dripping with the exact same black sludge he had seen on Xiao Lin’s corpse.

The system prompt suddenly flared to life:

【Ding-dong! Player You Yan has triggered a Hidden Quest: Help the Monster Doctor drive away the three annoying pests.】

【Quest rewards will be distributed to your status panel based on player capability assessment. Commencing player data retrieval……. Retrieval failed… Retrying data retrieval…. Retrieval successful. Player capability assessment: 0.】

【Quest Reward: None.】

【You lucky yet profoundly miserable player, the adorable Monster Doctor is currently in desperate need of your assistance!】

You Yan: “?”

His focus locked entirely onto the rewards section. His gaze lingered on the word “None” for a long, silent moment.

If there’s no reward, why the hell are you trying to exploit me like a pack mule?

Even when I act as a low-level NPC in an escape room, I get paid an actual wage. The fact that I’m even bothering to play this trash game of yours is already charity.

“No,” You Yan rejected flatly.

He spun on his heel and walked toward the end of the corridor. The hemostatic forceps spun in a flawless, elegant arc through his fingers before being driven violently, straight into the center of the monster doctor’s forehead.

The monster doctor, who had been standing by idly waiting for his assistance, didn’t even have time to react before his body crashed heavily onto the floor tiles with a dull thud, his wide, vacant eyes staring uselessly at the ceiling. The remaining half of his face fractured upon impact with the floor, leaving him with only half a skull.

Without bothering to look back, You Yan pushed open the nearest door and stepped inside.

If he’s dead, I don’t have to help him anymore.

【Player has broken away from the narrative script. System data corruption detected. Initiating system reboot…….】

Meanwhile, in an isolated pocket of space within this alternate universe, a massive gathering of players from all across the globe had assembled though calling them all “players” might not have been entirely accurate.

Suspended directly in the center of the space was a massive, glowing holographic text:

[The Main God Instance Player Hub]

Every single instance game is conceived by the Main God; every single rule is dictated by the Main God. Those who violate them shall be thoroughly obliterated by the system.

Fighting was strictly prohibited inside the Survival Game Lobby, and under normal circumstances, individual skills could not be activated within this zone.

Every individual here bore a digital countdown timer branded onto their right wrist, representing the remaining time before they were forced into their next instance. It also doubled as their personal status panel interface. Players who achieved exceptional ratings inside an instance were granted significantly longer resting periods before their next mandatory entry.

There wasn’t anything inherently unique about this pocket dimension. It floated suspended in a vast void, while the surrounding environment constantly shifted through simulated projections cycling through star-filled galaxies, vast oceans, active volcanoes, and endless grasslands. The passing players had long since grown accustomed to the view.

The hub served one primary function:

Allows two players who are physically separated by immense distances in the real world to meet face-to-face inside the lobby.

The recorded footage of every instance cleared by a player would be archived within their panel. Exceptionally powerful high-tier players could pay a fixed amount of points to unlock and review the clearing techniques of other high-level players.

However, the Main God system was notoriously hostile toward rookies. It would automatically broadcast the footage of a new player’s very first instance directly onto the community panel networks, making it available for any player to view at will.

It was the ultimate equivalent of a public live-stream or a death replay.