The elevator doors opened, and Yeon-woo stepped outside.
"......"
What he needed to do first was clear.
'I need to keep my mouth shut.'
But the uninvited guest on his shoulder seed to have no intention whatsoever of cooperating.
"Pardon?"
'Have you lost your mind?'
It knew perfectly well that making sound was forbidden. After how many tis they had been here.
Despite Yeon-woo's reproach, Coco purred and rolled about on his shoulder. The attempt to smooth over every situation with cuteness was impossibly infuriating.
'This wicked cat.'
"Pardon?"
"......"
Yeon-woo pressed his thumb hard against his temple. Things were precarious from the very start.
'I would be most grateful if you would keep quiet as well.'
"......"
'Most grateful.'
The 14th Floor was similar to Room 14, yet the air itself was different.
Wires dangling from the ceiling, old control panels mounted on the walls, and monitors gone dark. The space looked as though an abandoned research facility and a surveillance center had been mashed together.
'More objects and terrain features.'
Rusted steel plates and broken tiles, and experint tables stained with blood appeared here and there. Unlike Room 14, which was walled in by concrete on all sides, this place had glass walls that offered clear views of the interior.
A few steps further, and blood-soaked writing beca visible beyond a glass wall.
'That must be....'
Yeon-woo approached and peered inside.
"......"
It was a mural -- carved in intaglio, using blood for paint.
The skill was not exceptional, yet the sight that had consud the walls and ceiling exuded a strange grandeur. Countless concepts could be read within the painting.
'...Was it like this in the ga, too?'
He had encountered similar damaged murals throughout the 14th Floor before.
But a 2D sprite image and a real mural diverged from the very resolution. The graphics, in which he could barely make out the forms, took on the texture of reality, and it struck him with an entirely different weight.
However, the description that had appeared when attempting to interact with this painting in-ga was crystal clear.
[A mural depicting paradise.]
Yeon-woo had felt puzzled every ti.
'What about this could possibly be called paradise?'
No matter how many tis he looked, he could not sympathize.
What had the Playable Character seen to call this 'paradise'? No matter how hard he racked his brain, the identity of the 'General Manager' remained shrouded in fog.
"......"
'The Guest Without Taste must have seen these paintings, too.'
Yeon-woo carefully opened the door. With a creak, the rusted hinges let out a sharp scream.
"...Ah."
Found it.
'As I suspected, this is a different room from the mural chamber I saw last ti.'
The texture of the blood painted on the wall had seed subtly different, and his hunch proved correct.
Yeon-woo picked up a faded sheet of paper from the floor. In the ga, it had been an item described rely as 'docunts containing various experint records.'
But now that it had beco reality, the detailed contents beyond the text could be read.
'Heavily damaged.'
The blood-stained paper looked as though it might crumble at any mont.
'I can't afford to leisurely decipher it here.'
Yeon-woo slid the paper directly into his Inventory.
Whether he found a way to restore it later or examined it sowhere safe, collecting it now was the best course. Discovering what had happened here was a matter directly tied to survival.
'Now then, where.'
He rummaged through the experint chamber with practiced hands. The instinct for finding useful items was already ingrained in his body. He had the ti spent enduring this hotel to show for it.
'Ah, here too....'
"Pardon."
'Please.'
"Pardon."
"......"
Swallowing Coco's response for a mont, Yeon-woo pulled a syringe from deep inside a docunt box.
A slim syringe with a small capacity. Through the dusty transparent wall, a strangely shimring liquid was visible. It looked both repulsive and sohow sacred.
[Purification Sample]
An essential item for the 14th Floor assault.
This place was structured so that rely being present contaminated both body and mind. The longer one stayed, the more one heard bizarre auditory hallucinations, visual noise crept in, and eventually one lost all sense of direction and died as the self collapsed.
'I need to use this to recover each ti contamination builds....'
The problem was capacity.
'Even in the ga, this was always a sore point.'
A single syringe could not fully wash away the contamination. Given that recovery speed would clearly be slower now that this was reality, the answer was to stockpile Purification Samples on sight.
Yeon-woo carefully stepped out of the room and surveyed his surroundings.
"......"
The monitors and panels lining the corridor were uniformly dark, as if by agreent.
'That's another thing to watch for.'
Even those that appeared dead were, in so cases, still alive.
They were organically linked to surveillance caras and 'watchers,' sharing an intruder's location in real ti. The mont one entered their field of view, any carefully laid plan would descend into chaos.
On this 14th Floor, there existed a total of six types of watchers.
Listener / Watcher,
Analyzer / Archivist,
Controller.
And lastly, the Omni-Tracker.
'I haven't even laid eyes on the Omni-Tracker yet....'
Not encountering that one was in his best interest.
They ranged from those that actively patrolled to those that held their ground, each with a different disposition. In realistic terms, what Yeon-woo was most wary of were the mobile types, which carried the most variables.
'If I can just map the patterns, I'll almost never encounter anything beyond the Listener and Watcher. As long as I don't have to force my way into a room.'
The patterns numbered no more than a hundred at most. Since an experint chamber had appeared right at the start, the possibilities had already narrowed to seventy-one.
Just as during the Room 14 pursuit, the layout changed with each entry, but it could not fool the ntal calculator of a twenty-six-year veteran.
"......"
As he walked on with care, Coco hopped down from his shoulder and followed silently behind. A truly cat-like soft-paw gait.
Yeon-woo felt a flicker of puzzlent and asked inwardly.
'Are you certain you do not need to ride on my shoulder?'
[Yes.]
"......?"
A translucent system window materialized out of thin air. What manner of Dokkaebi trick was this? Yeon-woo looked back and forth between Coco on the floor and the floating window.
'Was this ssage sent by you, Coco?'
[Yes.]
[Coco.]
'I see.'
As a Co-owner of a hotel in a horror ga, having a convenient telepathy function of this sort was plausible enough. Yes, plausible, and yet....
"......?"
...Then why had it not shown this until now?
'Do you simply not wish to converse with ?'
[No?]
'Understood.'
To think it had possessed such an ability.
'With this, there should be no cause for commotion.'
Above all, Coco was ticulously silencing its footsteps. As long as it did not deliberately act up, there was no need to worry about being detected by a Listener.
As long as it did not deliberately act up.
"......"
Yeon-woo looked down at Coco. Coco shaped its mouth into a round O, looking deeply aggrieved.
[I feel wronged.]
'Wronged.'
In truth, there was a conversation he would not have minded having on that topic.
He had filed down the sharp edges of his temperant to presentable smoothness, forcibly paved a crooked road, and had been living a reasonably stable life. Suddenly swept up in this disaster and killed over and over, but well.
[W■??l]
'I am not sure.'
[Coco.]
'Yes, I am fine.'
He did not want to broach such matters in a situation like this.
'Your vocabulary has certainly grown. You are doing well.'
[No. I feel wronged.]
'Aha, understood.'
[I feel wronged.]
'Yes.'
As if he could trust that mischievous Co-owner.
'Then why have you been listening to my words in silence all this ti?'
[Wronged!]
'I see.'
Questions arose, but there was no need to address them now.
'For now... I will accept it gratefully as consideration for my sake.'
[Yes.]
'For now.'
[Pardon?]
The structure here was similar to Room 14. Countless rooms repeated, and so sections stretched endlessly or twisted grotesquely.
To those who did not know the patterns, it would be an inescapable labyrinth, but Yeon-woo thought otherwise.
'Still, the patterns are easier to distinguish here than in Room 14.'
[No?]
'That is an opinion I cannot comprehend.'
How could one compare when the room types were this clearly distinct? Compared to Room 14, where every room looked identical, the 14th Floor -- with its visually obvious differences -- was far more forgiving.
'Seems you do take pride in this ga.'
[Yes.]
'Indeed.'
Was that why the difficulty had been made this way? Yeon-woo felt a fresh wave of sorrow for the years he had spent grappling with this ga alone.
'If only the developer had tuned the difficulty a bit more humanely, I would not be suffering this much.'
Just then, a sharp electronic tone pierced Yeon-woo's ears.
'Oh no.'
He mid covering his ears.
'A control zone already.'
The electronic tones and light interference here accelerated contamination speed. The contamination reading on his Interface was climbing ominously. With only one Purification Sample secured, the situation was rather dire.
'With my bag this empty, I cannot enter.'
[Danger. Danger.]
'Let us search for more items.'
The control zone and server room. A space tangled with countless surveillance caras and wires -- it was no different from a minefield. The instant one was exposed to the caras, every nearby watcher would activate.
'This is not simply a matter of contamination. To clear this zone safely, an ID Card is essential.'
But the risk was well worth it. Server rooms like this had a high probability of spawning core items needed for the Central Control Room assault.
'With this, the possible patterns narrow to fifty-nine.'
It was uncommon for an 'experint chamber' and a 'control zone' to appear in quick succession early on....
"......"
[Hello?]
'I will need to think on this.'
Yeon-woo already felt exhaustion creeping in. The thought of scraping together every item and pushing all the way to the Central Control Room made his chest tight.
***
The Guest Without Taste, in the dining area.
Before his eyes, a banquet of every conceivable delicacy had been laid out in extravagance.
Tranquil firelight flickering from silver candelabras and the silver cutlery that glead smoothly in its reflection. Over the table hung a rich, deep aroma of dishes that could beguile anyone.
He slowly held wine in his mouth.
"......"
It had no taste. None at all. The liquid that t his tongue left nothing but a faint, cool weight before slipping down his throat.
Perhaps the records behind the glass walls of the 14th Floor's revolting laboratories -- screaming, blood-soaked -- would have tasted far more vivid. The him of before....
Those alone would have been enough to fill his belly with magnanimity.
"......"
...Yes, that was how it was. He had already relearned hunger. He could no longer sate it with the screams of others. Benevolent and cunning evil god.
Ah, do you know? What a delightful wait this is.
"May I have so?"
He gladly waited for the mont of invitation.
The mont a single drop of blood fell from you.
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