Chapter 98: Dragon Palace Hospital (4)

4. Facility Usage Rules

As with most facilities inside ghost stories, they must not be damaged carelessly.

Whenever possible, anything locked with a padlock should be opened with the proper key before entering.

If breaking something is unavoidable, it is best to prepare for the possibility that a Shadowless Lamp Jellyfish may appear.

For details regarding that monster, refer to section 3―3.

For any additional situations that may occur, refer to section 5 below.

Scrrrape― Scrrrape―

The sound of heavy legs dragging slowly across the floor continued for a long time.

The Man in Lead Armor wandered around the preparation room with his head tilted to one side, unable to properly support his long neck.

His legs were abnormally short, preventing him from lifting them fully, so he had no choice but to keep dragging them along the floor.

Sounds coming from somewhere kept provoking him.

Those sounds that kept repeating. Those sounds.

Crash―

Then a sharp sound reached the monster’s ears.

The piercing sound of glass breaking.

The monster immediately identified the direction it had come from and charged toward it, violently forcing its dragging legs forward.

The pounding of its heavy body shook the white floor.

Its hard lead clothing repeatedly scraped against its flesh, crushing it until it was sliced apart and torn away.

But the creature paid no attention and finally reached the place where the sound had originated.

Dozens of glass IV bottles lay shattered horribly across the floor.

Kraaaagh―!

A harsh, monstrous cry, as though something cylindrical rather than anything that could be called vocal cords were reverberating.

The monster screamed toward its surroundings and began thrashing wildly through the shards of glass where the noise had come from.

Its skin was thick, but the viciously thin, sharp glass cut into it until the floor gradually became stained with black blood.

Even so, the monster wildly swung its short arms around as though desperate to find the source of the noise.

Bang―!

Bang―!

From the far end of the corridor, Su-myeon’s gunshots rang out sharply as he watched the creature.

One bullet struck its head and another its neck.

The monster, pierced through, toppled backward from the impact.

And Cheshire immediately leaped onto it.

His fist, pulled far back, slammed straight into the monster’s abdomen.

Boom―!

The impact was so loud that it was difficult to believe it had come from a punch.

Their ambush appeared to have worked perfectly.

The monster convulsed, its limbs trembling, before finally becoming still.

“I-Is it over?”

Ju-hee, who had been standing ready with a crowbar, asked cautiously.

Cheshire tapped the monster’s forehead a few times with his finger, then nodded.

“...Yeah. It’s dead.”

The lead covering the creature Cheshire had taken down with a single blow had caved deeply inward.

As though its insides had ruptured, disgusting liquid began leaking from every opening in its body.

Su-myeon remembered the moment when they had first entered the ghost story.

He had taken particular note of Cheshire’s strength when Cheshire had shattered the skull of the monster that grabbed Su-myeon’s wrist with a single blow.

It seemed his suspicion that Cheshire’s grip strength and physical power were far beyond those of an average person had been correct.

“You should keep those, Cheshire.”

Su-myeon had no desire to personally use a close-range weapon anyway.

And if an item increased its wielder’s strength, it made sense to give it to someone who could make better use of it.

While Cheshire wore the satisfied expression of a well-fed cat at Su-myeon’s words, Ju-hee finally lowered her weapon completely.

“Here’s the key too. Let’s get going.”

Cheshire took the key from the monster’s waist and left the area.

Su-myeon had expected him to step over the monster’s body and avoid the shards of glass on his way out....

“Wait, wait! What are you doing?! Are your feet okay?”

Cheshire carelessly walked straight across the broken glass.

“Oh...?”

At Su-myeon’s words, Cheshire stopped and looked down.

Very slowly, blood began seeping from the cuts in the soles of his feet.

Only then did Cheshire seem to notice and lift one foot.

Several shards of glass, each about the size of a finger, were embedded in it, and he casually pulled them out with his hand.

It was painful just to watch, but Cheshire did not let out so much as a small groan.

Only then did Su-myeon notice one more strange thing.

“You... don’t feel pain?”

***

Su-myeon barely managed to give Cheshire’s foot first aid with the bandages he had on hand.

He removed the glass shards and poured disinfectant over the wounds, but the bandages he had were quickly soaked through with blood.

“Will you... be okay like this?”

“I can still move for now. We just need to get out quickly, don’t we?”

Cheshire’s careless response, as though they were discussing someone else entirely, made Su-myeon sigh.

Though he was not wrong.

There was no reason for the three of them to waste any more time, so they headed back toward the emergency stairs.

After carefully unlocking the padlock, they found a fistful of Rose Coins lying on the stairs beyond.

“Seventeen.”

Su-myeon took the Coins Cheshire picked up for him and inserted them into his Heartphone before climbing the stairs with the others.

Once they went higher, B2, the second basement floor, finally came into view.

He wanted to continue straight upward again, but something was standing tall on the stairs.

3―3) Shadowless Lamp Jellyfish

Do not touch it under any circumstances.

If no contact is made, it will show no interest.

However, if contact occurs, it will perform a specific operation.

For additional information regarding the changes caused by that operation, refer to section 3―4 below.

It was a grotesque monster that looked as though several people had been laid facedown across the surgical lamp one might find attached to the ceiling of an operating room.

Where the central light should have been, five hanging heads had been joined together by their necks.

Lights had been installed inside each mouth, which had been forced wide open as though the jawbones had been broken.

For now, however, the lights were off, as though the creature were asleep.

Below them, limp arms and legs hung down like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

Or like electrical wires.

They drooped all the way to the floor.

“.......”

Afraid that even the sound of their voices might wake it.

The three swallowed dryly and moved away, opening the fire door and entering the interior of B2.

This floor was lined with operating rooms stretching down the corridor.

Operating rooms....

As Su-myeon briefly fell into thought, Ju-hee asked,

“......Do you think maybe Manager Young-cheol’s friend could be here?”

Yoon Jae-hak.

The surgeon who had been Young-cheol’s friend.

If the owner of the ghost story wanted to make use of him, this was exactly the sort of place where that might happen.

Su-myeon had no idea that Ji-hoon, who had once been used in a similar way, had reached the same conclusion back at the office.

But Su-myeon likewise considered Jae-hak’s chances of survival relatively high.

“We’ll have to open them one by one if we want to check, right?”

Not that I particularly want to.

At Cheshire’s words, Su-myeon took off his glasses, cleaned them properly, and nodded.

Looks like we will....

“And while we’re here, I think we should take a better look at Cheshire’s injury.”

Ju-hee had a point.

He was walking normally, almost as though he felt no pain at all, but the bandages Su-myeon had wrapped around the wound were already completely soaked with blood.

It was difficult to tell whether the bleeding had even stopped.

“If there are proper bandages or disinfectant here, let’s use them before we move on.”

“Do we really need to?”

There was a faintly annoyed tone in Cheshire’s voice, but Su-myeon answered firmly.

“You’re not a stuffed doll anymore. You’re human now.”

It was something Su-myeon had noticed several times by now.

Cheshire had a subtle talent for making situations more troublesome than they needed to be.

They opened the door to the first operating room.

The strangely structured room, the kind Su-myeon had only ever seen in medical dramas or movies, was filled with cold, chilly air and the smell of disinfectant.

After searching through the supplies, Su-myeon and Ju-hee pulled out plenty of disinfectant and bandages.

“Sit up there first.”

Su-myeon, who had brought over an entire box of bandages, pointed toward the operating table.

Cheshire looked bored, but he climbed up and sat where Su-myeon told him without complaint.

It was not that he felt no pain at all, but he seemed far less sensitive to it than normal.

After unwrapping Cheshire’s bandages again, Ju-hee practically poured disinfectant directly over his foot.

As they checked to make sure no glass remained inside, it at least seemed that the bleeding had slowed somewhat.

“......Your recovery might be a little faster than normal too...?”

“...It does seem that way.”

At Ju-hee and Su-myeon’s words, Cheshire nodded.

“A body that doesn’t feel much pain isn’t so bad~”

“It is bad!”

While Ju-hee snapped sharply at Cheshire, Su-myeon finally cleaned the wound properly.

He used two bandages to wipe away the disinfectant pouring freely from the injury, then wrapped the foot with the remaining clean bandages.

While Su-myeon stored the rest of the bandages back in his inventory.

Cheshire, despite having lost quite a lot of blood, did nothing but yawn repeatedly.

Anyone looking at him would think Cheshire was fully human now.

But things like this did not feel human in the slightest.

Of course, there were medical conditions in which humans could not feel pain.

But if that were the case, shouldn’t he be unable to feel it at all? Cheshire’s case was strangely ambiguous.

“You weren’t the type who couldn’t feel pain back when you were human, were you?”

“Don’t know.”

“So maybe you haven’t completely become human?”

“......That... I wouldn’t know either?”

Just as Cheshire said, there was no way to know any of it.

He had lost his memories from when he had been human, so they had no way to know anything about his past.

And because Cheshire was the first person to experience the effects of a Golden Rose, they did not know the full extent of what it could do either.

Even Bell had only just managed to bloom her first Golden Rose.

As its very first test subject, if Cheshire suffered some kind of side effect, they would simply have to discover it for themselves from now on.

And even if there were side effects, they were ultimately Cheshire’s problem to bear.

He would just have to consider it the price for stealing and eating the Rose instead of waiting for his turn.

“Let’s get you properly treated once we’re out.”

After finally giving the wound a proper examination, the group rose from their seats.

There was nothing else to see there, so they opened the door to the next operating room.

The sight inside was very different from the previous room.

It looked more appropriate to call it a morgue than an operating room.

Cold stainless-steel beds stretched out in three long rows, dozens of them in total.

Something lay on every single one, covered by a white sheet.

The sight was more than enough to evoke corpses, and Ju-hee spoke cautiously.

“......Surely he wouldn’t be in here, would he?”

Part of Su-myeon thought that, just in case, they should probably check whether he might be among them.

But he agreed with Ju-hee.

“Let’s get out of here.”

However, wanting to leave as quickly as possible was only Su-myeon’s opinion.

Apparently, the things lying there did not agree.

All at once, the figures lying on the beds slowly began raising their upper bodies.

Most ordinary people would brace themselves with their hands or use momentum to sit up.

But these things moved as though they possessed tremendous abdominal strength.

Smoothly.

They slowly raised their torsos.

“.......”

The group watched the scene as though they had frozen without realizing it.

As the bodies rose, the sheets covering them all the way over their heads slid downward.

Their faces were exposed completely beneath the white lights.

Their mouths had been forced grotesquely wide open with mouth gags, as though their lips had been torn apart.

Their eyelids had been cut upward all the way across their foreheads and scalps, then raised like rabbit ears and held in place with wire.

Afraid of drawing the attention of the creatures as their eyes rolled around wildly, looking as though they might fall out at any moment.

The group remained frozen and did not move.

The creatures moved very smoothly, yet an eerie sound came from them as though their joints had gone stiff.

Crrrk― Crrrk―

Like the grinding of teeth.

A bizarre sound continued, as though bone were being pressed hard against bone and scraped together.