Welco, General Manager.
What sits before you is not rely an old television. This is the 'Manager Qualification Exam'—a test to determine whether you are worthy of reaching the Central Control Room on the 14th floor.
"......"
[Test Objective]
[Control the subjects within the chaos!]
The TV screen flickers through a variety of scenes. Your task is to serve as the Central Control Room's interim manager, identifying the 'research subjects' and 'researchers' on screen and controlling them with the remote.
※Research subjects: Quarantine them so they cannot approach the room where you and the researchers are located※
※Researchers: Protect them from external threats and research subjects so they are neither killed nor injured※
"......"
[Test thod]
[Observe, judge, manage!]
The screen is rife with heavy noise, distortion, and flickering. In your hand is an old remote equipped with a quarantine button and a safety button.
※Quarantine button: Red※
※Safety button: Blue※
Two key targets appear and vanish on the TV screen in very brief intervals. They will be clearly distinguishable even through the noise.
※Research subjects: Figures with twisted bodies, appearing to crawl toward the edge of the screen※
※Researchers: Figures in white lab coats, sotis appearing to be in danger※
The mont you identify a target, you must press the corresponding remote button.
※When a research subject appears, press the 'quarantine button' to prevent it from reaching you※
※When a researcher appears, press the 'safety button' to protect them※
Multiple subjects and researchers may alternate in rapid succession within a short window. You must identify targets in real ti and press the correct button to achieve flawless managent.
"......"
Are you prepared to pass this test and face the hidden truth?
"Nothing I can't handle."
Then let us begin.
The test starts now.
***
"Managent simulation mini-gas of this sort aren't particularly difficult."
"Eeh."
"I'm not sure why you're disappointed, but Hoone was a pixel-art ga. Large for a pixel-art ga, granted, but it didn't have the capacity to implent complex AI-driven patterns... as far as I know."
"Yes."
"That said, objectively speaking, this does rank as fairly complex."
Click, BOOM!
Click, BEEP—BEEP—BEEP—
Click, AAAGH!!
"I've been playing nothing but this ga for twenty-six years."
He'd long since morized all forty-eight patterns and then so.
"The higher resolution actually makes the perceived difficulty lower. Ha, the first ti I played this ga, the crude pixels hurt my eyes so badly I was dying left and right without even knowing what was what."
"Pixels?"
"Precise inputs like these are hard to pull off with pixel graphics. If I recall correctly, the developer put a lot of effort into color calibration, which barely brought it to a playable resolution."
"Colors, pixels. A lot of effort."
"That's right. Not that it stopped my eyes from going blurry. Compared to then, a high-definition screen with a bit of noise is... practically a freebie."
Reaction speed: 0.5 seconds. He was keeping his eyes on the screen as a precaution against unexpected variables, but no patterns diverged from his mory.
"......"
It was rely unfamiliar.
'...Who are they?'
A ga was just a ga. Unless based on a true story, it ought to be fictional entertainnt.
But the beings in the footage beyond the old CRT looked far too much like real people. Not just the people. The facilities, too, and even the movents of grotesquely twisted flesh and bone.
They looked like records that must have existed sowhere, on so day—without question.
"So this is what it feels like as actual footage."
"Pardon?"
"No, it's just that the disconnect from what I'd vaguely imagined is quite large. I keep feeling this, but it's like being at an imrsive experience venue thed around Hoone. The pixel art was... probably...."
Ah, he nearly slipped up. Yeon-woo adjusted his grip on the remote.
"...The pixel art was probably serving double duty as mosaic censoring. The patterns are familiar, but the footage itself feels like I'm seeing it for the first ti."
Black tal chunks and rusted wires crudely embedded in human bodies. They seed connected to the nervous system, squirming with each movent, producing a nerve-grating friction.
"Extrely cruel."
Subjects whose body parts had turned transparent or mutated into luminous crystalline structures. Distorted organs were visible through the crystal growths sprouting from eyes, foreheads, lips, and other parts of the body. Occasional blue flashes flickered within.
"Deeply grotesque...."
The subjects whose skin had been entirely stripped were also striking. Intricate blueprints and circuit diagrams were engraved onto the exposed dermis. They seed to have lost even the will to move, standing motionless or embedded in walls.
"Revolting."
Yeon-woo watched them all.
"......"
A being with its neural network fully exposed. An artificial neural network blinked with blue light. Beneath torn skin, it squird—expressionless, yet weeping tears of blood. It didn't even have the freedom to make a face.
Limbs twisted and deford into spider-like shapes. The entire body bound in old leather straps. tal fragnts and experintal tubes embedded in the flesh, every attempt to escape thwarted by horrific restraints.
Parts of the body grotesquely enlarged. An oversized head. Expanded ears. Collapsed on the floor or propped against walls, unable to support its own weight. Behavior suggesting attempts to cover its eyes or block its ears.
"...Hmm...."
And that was.
'...Judging by my limited Blood Magic knowledge, that's unmistakably close to a successful specin.'
Yeon-woo observed every scene without so much as blinking. An observer's position, perhaps, but mistakes weren't tolerated in his case either.
"I feel very unwell."
"No."
"It should have stayed as just a ga."
If those beings had actually existed. If this footage wasn't re rendering but an actual recording of so past day. If the suffering preserved there was what he was currently watching—
Yeon-woo would sincerely want to lose his mind.
"It's not simply that watching unethical footage makes
feel this way. I can see a consistent pattern. The subjects in the footage are clearly being studied for a specific... purpose."
It had been the sa in the ga.
"They prayed to a malevolent god?"
Rituals were perford in its na.
"But this is... a bit...."
"......"
"...The direction...."
"......"
"......"
There was a direction to it.
"...The destruction of humanity. Transparency, or crystalline... blue... purification."
"......"
"Not re physical mutation but an attempt to cleanse—why would purification and destruction need to coexist? tal chunks and chains."
"......"
"Torture, presumably, but if it were aningless torture...? Given this level of investnt, there's no way it would be.... Connected to the nervous system. Repetitively injecting pain to... sin?"
"......"
"Instilling awareness of sin, and purification...."
This was not simple torture. A cunning injection of suffering through the neural network, and an attempt to shatter the body to refine the soul.
To summarize, this was.
"......"
"Penance?"
Faceless watchers and facsimiles with only smiles preserved. Masses designed solely for control, castrated of individuality and self, stripped of free will.
"Why?"
The circuit diagrams and blueprints engraved on the bodies reduced human flesh to re components. The modified bodies and artificially expanded senses were forcibly absorbing external information.
'They wanted evolution.'
These people had attempted to create beings that transcended humanity.
'And simultaneously forced penance.'
Yes, they had attempted to create sothing sacred.
"......"
...He felt truly unwell.
"This doesn't look like a re work of fiction."
"Yes."
"It's a deeply unpleasant fact, but I found sections in the footage where Blood Magic was utilized. And Blood Magic doesn't belong to the fiction of a ga called Hoone—it exists in this reality."
"Yes."
"These are actual records."
"Yes."
"......"
He removed his glasses and rubbed his face.
"...Quite the accomplishnt."
The mini-ga was over.
***
A shutter, hideously warped and breached.
Darkness settled over the pools of blood glistening in every groove of the cratered floor.
Cutting through that silence, the hem of a dark crimson longcoat drifted slowly inward. A man so pale he appeared transparent stopped before the blood.
"......"
His fra was abnormally gaunt, as though thin leather had been stretched over thick bones, yet the matte longcoat maintained its clean lines.
The man's lips didn't stir, but anyone could hear his voice.
"Oh."
With his mouth firmly closed and only a thin smile showing, he asked courteously.
"Hello?"
As if itching to snatch sothing, his knobby fingers twitched in the air. A languid movent that produced not even the faintest friction.
"May I have so?"
The blood-loving guest asked once more.
Beneath his neatly trimd nails, dark crimson traces clung like brands. His hands drifted together as if in prayer, eting at his chest.
Every movent was smooth, fluid. Like a painting in slow motion.
"May I have so?"
Pupils faintly tinged with the color of dried blood.
Clink, clink. The faint sound of cutlery clinking, as one might hear from a kitchen or dining table. The warm noise and gentle sounds of a harmonious al were layered atop the eerie silence.
A harmonious conversation.
"May I—"
The sounds of a pleasant al cut off abruptly.
"......"
All noise drowned in blackness.
"So it's you."
Just one bite.
The mouth that had not opened tore open in dark crimson. A tongue made contact.
***
The instant he rose from his seat after finishing the mini-ga.
"......"
Yeon-woo ran a hand over his forearm. Goosebumps—
Strictly speaking, his body wasn't normal enough to actually raise them, but that was approximately how it felt. He'd just learned a fact shocking enough to make him doubt his own judgnt.
He murmured quietly.
"...Soone is currently eating ."
"Pardon?"
He was a mass of liquid blood, living blood incarnate. As long as the distance wasn't too great, he could perceive in real ti where and how his shed blood was being consud.
Because blood that had left his body was still part of him, and still alive.
"Who on earth...."
"Who?"
"Ah, hold on."
"Who?"
"'The Guest Without Taste.'"
Yeon-woo called the blood-loving guest by na.
"Still checked in today."
A mid-tier erosion-type Monster Guest. A being with the unique trait of appearing almost instantaneously wherever blood was spilled. The most likely suspect currently sampling Yeon-woo's blood.
"So even during an internal hotel event... it can appear? Unlike the ga, this is reality, and there's no reason The Guest Without Taste couldn't co here?"
"......"
"Coco?"
"Yes...."
"Yes?"
Has it lost its mind?
"A reason to secure blood packs just beca urgent."
Yeon-woo was soone who had to cough up blood simply by existing—a successful subject of the Crimson Core Comntary who had contracted a Water Ghost. He was essentially a smartphone whose battery drained in real ti.
And now, on top of his reserves being drastically depleted by the cutscene event, a Monster Guest had entered the picture. If they t head-on, there was only one thing he could offer as a substitute.
'Climbing onto that person's dining table.'
Absolutely not. Realizing the situation had turned urgent, Yeon-woo let out a lant.
"Ha, I was in the middle of one of the hotel's rare internal events...."
"Eeh?"
Coco looked up with eyes that said 'Is that really what matters right now?', but Yeon-woo ignored it. Self-contained events on non-existent floors were rare.
'Above all, internal hotel events cannot be replayed.'
The mini-ga alone had demonstrated that. This place was a concentration of data about the hotel—especially the hotel as it existed now, made real.
And it wouldn't even give him ti to organize that precious information.
"This is why there are no other players."
"Eeh?!"
Coco was stricken. Its eyes stayed the sa, but its mouth rounded into a large 'O.' It seed to have learned to mimic reasonably human reactions. Impressive, and at the sa ti, he felt a pang too.
"If the difficulty had been designed rationally from the start, there's no way I'd have been the only player for all those years! Granted, my buying up the entire copyright and blocking distribution played a part...!"
"Yes!"
"Are you taking the developer's side right in front of ?!"
"No!!"
"I appreciate that!!"
It seed that between the developer who'd wept in despair at the ga's unpopularity and sold the rights, and Yeon-woo—the twenty-six-year veteran player and de facto owner—Coco had chosen to side with Yeon-woo.
"......"
"......"
The two quickly regained their composure. This was not the ti.
"The Guest Without Taste is pathologically obsessed with consuming blood, and right now, I am blood incarnate. At this rate, I'll be reduced to a handful of al and vanish into a monster's stomach."
"That can't happen...."
"Excellent language response just now. Well done."
"Blood pack...."
"I'll go find them shortly."
But first, let
grab so items.
"Pardon?"
"Pardon?"
He needed to desensitize himself.
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