「 “Hello, player.”

Welcome to the horror game.

“The Mansion of the Dead” is a manor located in the middle of the Resian Empire’s capital where a nobleman with high authority used to live. This mansion is a place where everything, including the humans living in the mansion, was savagely annihilated decades ago by other humans, who had made pacts with demons. As a result, the entire estate is now steeped in evil energy.

As the days pass, the mansion has become more ferocious, and the energy has gradually begun to spread throughout the capital. The emperor, who cannot stand that power invading, has decided to seek someone to release the curse for tremendous rewards.

However, there are none who have gone in and come back on their own. As a result of people going and only dying, barely a few are willing to come forward now.

You are “Fidelis” of the Swalds, who has come in to win the reward from now on.

In addition to you, there are several other players here as well. It is your choice whether to work together or move individually.

Now, let me give you a brief description of the game.

You have only one purpose.

Avoid the undead in the mansion, find hints, and lift the curse. When you clear a hidden game event, a powerful hint or item will be given to help solve the curse.

You can share hints with other players, and you can take away other players’ items, so please keep that in mind.

Once you lift the curse of the mansion, you can leave. Even if a player other than you releases the curse, you can still escape (though, you won’t receive the emperor’s reward).

However, if you can’t resolve the curse, you’ll be trapped in the mansion until it’s lifted, so please be careful.

Precautions & Game Details:

Playing records are not saved.

After you achieve a bad ending, you will wake up in a different place, and the game will not be reset. (However, you will still lose all the items you have, except for those earned from game events.)

After an event story is cleared, the event will disappear.

You’re the only one who knows this is a world inside a game. (It’s your choice whether to tell the truth to others or not. However, we are not responsible for anything that will happen after that, so please be careful.)

Players can also collect hints and items to lift the curse, but there are skills that are just for you, so please cheer up. (Other players don’t know about the existence of skills, and they don’t have them.)

When you take an action that consumes your physical strength (e.g., running, screaming, etc.), your energy is consumed. (How to recover: minimize movement, sit still, find some peace of mind.)

Please survive well by avoiding the indiscriminately cruel entities, lifting the curse, and earning the reward that you came for.

Please begin running now.

Reading the long wall of text, Ye-in blinked blankly. There were only four words she could utter at that moment.

“Is this for real?”

A dejected voice popped out from between Ye-in’s lips.

Ye-in’s appearance was not something easily found in Korea, especially with her red eyes and exotic-looking face.

It was so rare that most people felt put off by her unfamiliar appearance.

The children who grew up together with her in the orphanage rejected her more than the others. They didn’t like her because she looked completely different from them.

Perhaps because of that, it was also difficult for the orphanage head to take in Ye-in. She gave up on properly raising her right away and left all the small chores of her orphanage to Ye-in.

Because of that, Ye-in had to start taking care of all the children, both those older than herself and also the younger ones, from her own very young age.

She had no complaints about it.

She realized early on that there was no place for her to stay outside of this orphanage, so she carried on her work without saying a word. Even if she complained, there was no one who would listen, so her small lips did not open very often.

There was only one person who spoke to her, which was her brother who was younger than her by two years. While she was organizing the children’s messy toys as she always did, a cell phone appeared in front of Ye-in. It was a new device that came in as a gift recently.

Everyone coveted it, but in the end it was the two-year old brother in front of her who got his hands on it.

The screen of the cell phone, which he showed her proudly, was filled with colorful characters. The child was flattered by Ye-in, who stared intently at the screen, and began to explain one of the popular games these days.

It was something everyone could see that he was proud to brag about, but she quietly listened to him anyway. It was one of her roles as a nurse, as Ye-in, who lived in that orphanage.

The name of the game was . She nodded her head, pretending to listen intently to the child’s babble, which he explained in quite a bit of detail, and humored him with an occasional response.

But, if she had known it would be like this, she would have listened more closely…

Ye-in sat on the floor and looked through the gloom-filled hallway, feeling as if she was being eaten by the endless darkness. She could feel the cold touch of the bare floor.

Her complexion slowly grayed, and soon turned white. Her cheeks trembled anxiously.

* * *

was not a game that was easy to play. The probability of not dying was extremely low, and the ghosts that came out were also needlessly scary. Thanks to that, it was enough to stimulate the players’ fears and apprehensions.

The background settings of the ghosts were also diverse, and players struggled to deal with unpredictable items and skills. It was a wonder how they could even call a normal comic game when murderers, ghosts, and mysterious monsters were the basic essence of its storyline. The only consolation was that the game itself was not overly difficult to clear.

Even though it was such a B-grade game, there were two reasons why it was still so popular. Mainly, it was the skill of the illustrator, who drew the ghosts, murderers, and the background of the mansion in a crazy realistic way. And it was also thanks to the feast of beautiful characters that appeared in the game.

Coincidentally, the protagonist of was able to date other characters after building affinity with them, so most players were more interested in creating lovers by raising affinity with the characters than actually clearing the game. In short, it was a horror game, but it could also be said to be more of a love simulation game or a dating sim

instead.

Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t scary. It was not an exaggeration to say that the illustrator drew with all his heart to produce such stunning artwork. Therefore, he was enjoying the splendid feat of raking in money even as he was criticized for being so sloppy as to release an end product that couldn’t be labeled anything better than a B-grade horror game with only atrocities.

This was a comprehensive review of , which was made after being evaluated by the public.

* * *

It was safe to say that Ye-in knew very little about because it was a story she had only roughly heard about from her younger brother. Ye-in didn’t personally play the game, so of course she didn’t know what the ending was like, and she didn’t know how to clear it or how to raise the characters’ favorabilities. All she knew was the most basic information about the game’s setting.

‘If I had known it was going to be like this, I would have played it at least once…

‘…Oh, but I don’t even have a cell phone.’ Ye-in’s shoulders drooped at the sudden thought.

Taking a shallow breath, Ye-in gave another look at the still-floating translucent window, then moved her gaze away from it and took in her surroundings with anxious eyes. She awoke at the end of a long corridor, where a single dimly lit candle stymied the darkness in the silent hallway.

The only thing she could see in the distance was the darkness that showed how long the corridor was.

The air surrounding her body was just barely warm enough to not give her chills, while the doors along the walls were all tightly closed. A mix of fishy blood

and musty dust stimulated her nose, drawing her eyes toward a drop or two of unidentified liquid that had fallen onto the floor and hardened.

Biting down on the tender flesh of her mouth in fear, Ye-in looked at the nearest door. The doorknob was already smeared with something brown and dried out.

“Hya!”

Ye-in, now Fidelis, let out a terrified shout, then hurriedly shut her mouth at the sound of her own voice echoing down the hallway. Just by looking at it, it was clear that the blood had already been there for a while.

“I really hate scary things…” As she muttered tearfully, she began to hear an eerie squeaking noise in the distance. Surprised, Fidelis covered her mouth with her hands and held her breath. She felt like her whole body was pounding and her heart was hammering fast enough to pop out.

The constant sound was like someone—or something—sitting in a rocking chair and moving, except that it was slowly growing louder like it was coming toward her.

Cold sweat began to form on Fidelis’s sleek forehead. Moving as close to the corner of the wall as possible, she pulled her legs together and closed her eyes tightly. Then, after a moment, the sound that seemed to be getting closer quickly faded away and disappeared.

Fidelis, who stayed curled up like that for a while, carefully opened her eyes and removed her hand from her lips.

Between them, a shallow breath gently flowed out. Fidelis gave a small cry, and buried her head in her lap. Her long hair flowed down her body, wrapping partly around it.

“I’m scared, I’m scared…”

In this unfamiliar situation, she couldn’t resist letting out some of the abusive language that was welling up inside of her. She was very weak to horror and thriller genres, to the extent that even a horror movie that was known to not be very scary became the most terrifying thing in the world to her.

After cursing and swearing for a bit at the unknown perpetrator who did this to her, she wiped the tears from her eyes.

“Hoo…”

As soon as she calmed her heart down, she took a deep breath and glanced at the end of the hallway again—then she also closed her eyes tightly, again. She didn’t have the guts to look anymore.

As if gazing into an unknown abyss, there was nothing that Fidelis could make out beyond the dim radius of the candlelight. She couldn’t even imagine the size of the entire mansion if all the hallways were like this.

‘If this is a dream, please wake me up.’ While making this desperate wish, she did everything she could, from pinching her cheeks or banging her head against the wall, to wake up from this dream, but she never returned to her original world. The throbbing pain in her cheeks and forehead and the strange odors entering her nose were vivid and distinct, as if proving that this wasn’t a dream.

Why all of a sudden?

Fidelis couldn’t find an answer to the question that popped into her mind. If it was the possession she knew about, she was supposed to possess someone’s body from the book she was reading, or from the game she was playing, but she really had no relation with at all.

Her only connection, if it could even be counted as one, was the brief, offhand description she had heard from her brother.

And Fidelis Swald?

Looking at her own outfit, it seemed as if she had been transferred to this place as herself and not as anyone else. Her familiar hands and feet, along with her usual pajamas, were proof of that.

But the strangely floating translucent pane in front of her called herself Fidelis, not Ye-in.

…Was it just a nickname? Or was there something important about that particular name?

Whatever it was. She didn’t even know why the name “Fidelis” was chosen for her. And if Fidelis was originally a character from , what role did she play?

She felt very frightened and frustrated by this situation where she didn’t know anything. No matter how many questions she had, there were no clear answers to any of them.

‘I found out about this game, which is famous, because my brother told me about it. But I was so busy living my life that I didn’t pay attention to anything around me, so I barely remember anything about it.

‘I’ve only heard about this game once!’ She couldn’t believe a situation like this was happening. Fidelis was almost paralyzed by the realization that she would have to extricate herself from this nightmare all alone.

But, no matter how she denied it, the smell of blood in the cold air continued to agitate her. While giving herself a bit of praise for not losing her mind in this situation, Fidelis shut her eyes tightly yet again.

A long moment later, she reopened them. Falling down in the corner like this wouldn’t solve anything. It was a fact that she knew painfully from her former world. In order for her to live, she would have to do everything on her own.

“Calm down.”

‘Hm, they said that you can get out of the tiger’s den if you come to your senses, right? But are they sure about that? Can I really go out even if I come to my senses?! I wonder if I was

going straight to goal before I came to my senses( blindly going straight to uncertain goal without self-awareness )…’ Fidelis asked and answered by herself, and groaned. Her desire to give up appeared and disappeared dozens of times, but she quickly took hold of herself.

She decided to think about her name later. The name probably wasn’t that important, and it wasn’t impossible that she had just been assigned a commonly used nickname.

Judging from the information written on the floating screen, the only way she could get out was to lift the curse.

Fidelis didn’t let go of the faint hope and was planning to find the door leading outside for now.

‘There won’t be anyone else to save me, either here or there.’

“As for the other players…”

She wasn’t the only one here. Maybe she could find a hint and share it so that they could all resolve the curse together…

‘No, wait. Will they even want to work with me?’ Fidelis’s face paled again as she pondered over it.

“When it mentions that there are ‘players,’ it might be referring to characters that exist in the game’s cast rather than normal background people.”

In that case, they might not have a mob mindset that she could easily persuade. As important characters in the game, just words from her might not work.

Still, when she thought about the story her younger brother told back at the orphanage, it seemed that the curse was lifted by joining forces with the other characters in the game.

‘…Actually, I don’t know.’ She couldn’t remember the details, so her mind became a little chaotic for a while.

‘Should I just wait until someone else lifts the curse?’ Fidelis nervously bit her nails, but she shook her head in the end. She couldn’t sit and wait for a curse that might be lifted or not. Despite how hard it was, she still missed the life she had lived. In comparison to this unknown terror, the daily life she had wanted to give up on so much looked very appealing right then.

‘If the head miss finds out that I didn’t clean up this morning, I’ll be scolded by her…’ In the midst of her fear, a worry from her original reality escaped, and she let out a sigh.

“Why on earth are you giving such an ordeal to a coward who can’t even go into a haunted house? If you want someone to break the curse, there are many people who are more courageous than me…I won’t forgive you if I ever catch you.” Her red eyes shone gloomily as she let out a depressed mumble.

She took a deep breath, calmed her mind and straightened her body.

‘Okay, let’s go to the front door first and see if it’s closed.

‘Let’s finish this little game and go back.’

Fidelis thought she had given herself some strength, but she was still trying not to cry over her weak legs with a trembling jaw.

But in order to live, she had to move.

When she took a step forward by barely moving her quivering leg with clenched teeth, the floating screen flickered out and back in with a bell-like notification.

Current health is 100%.

‘Crap, has it started?’

She wanted to give up again as soon as the transparent screen reappeared with a new message, but her decision was firmly made.

She looked around with my anxious eyes and pulled out a candle from the wall. It was a weak light, but it was better than nothing.

“Fuck! Ghosts, if you are coming out, don’t. Go back inside.”

I was in tears at the situation where the swearing came out spontaneously when I recklessly scratched my feet with something. I had to talk to myself to calm my mind. I looked at the nearest door and shook my head to not have any regrets.

I hardened my mind to not touch the door since I didn’t have the courage to turn the bloody handle. I moved forward from a little distance from the door.

As Fidelis passed the door from as far away as she could, she heard the sound of an old door opening behind her.

Creak–

At the sound of the door slowly opening, Fidelis stopped involuntarily and straightened her waist. At the same time, there was no more sound of the door opening.

She felt someone’s presence behind her back. A drop of sweat ran down her neck to her back. Fidelis closed her eyes as if liberated from the door opening and opened her eyes, then she screamed and began to run away.

“I am out! I can’t stay here! I’m out!”

Without looking behind me, I ran through the dark hallway without hesitation, looking only in front of me. My brain had already been paralyzed with fear before I could rationally think that if I screamed more, the ghosts could come out more.

As I was running, looking only in front of me, I saw a small gap behind the stairs. I hurried into it and hid there before taking a rough breath.

“Huff…Huff…”

Fidelis exhaled a long breath before crouching on the floor. And, when she heard a beep, she suddenly jumped and flapped like a fish out of water.

As she hurriedly came into the stairs, she realized that her candle had gone out. Fidelis pouted her mouth and wept again.

I grabbed the extinguished candle as if it were my last weapon and tried to step out carefully from the bottom of the gap, but I unknowingly smashed my knees to the floor of the stairs and my knees suddenly broke.

“Ah!”

” Your vigorous running has drained your energy. Your current health is 21%.”

At the same time, a long horizontal bar showing an empty space caught my eye. There was very little space filled in red, and on top of it was written ‘21% health’. It seemed to show my current physical condition.

Fidelis let out a sigh of relief as she looked at her bloody pain from her knees from time to time. I didn’t seem to run that much, but my stamina was almost at the bottom.

As I was forced to rest, I crawled out from the gap of stairs and looked around the surroundings. When I made sure there was nothing, I made my steps slowly and sat down.

I tidied my clinging hair as my face and neck were damp with cold sweat. I also raised my pants and patted my knees, which had hit the floor.

I had to fumble blindly as I couldn’t see a single light, but luckily, I didn’t touch the wound until I could see it. Maybe I was bruised.

“I’m really going crazy.”

I only heard the sound of the door, and I was scared to death. It was the first time I had run away looking forward like that. Not only my body, but my mind as well.

I was dazed in thought, and seeing the blood color bar which was nearly full floating in front of me, I had already reached 80% of my stamina.

I got up from my seat instead of filling 100% to the end. They said that just walking calmly restores energy, so this was fine.

When I sneaked out, I saw that both ends of the hallway were engulfed in darkness. I couldn’t even see where I first woke up.

To be honest, it was almost the same hallway, so I had a creepy feeling as if I could jump in place anytime if there’s a sound. I took the extinguished candle and brought the embers to life by moving to the light of another glowing candle nearby.

“I wish I had a flashlight or a lantern… No, send me home before then.”

When the candle lit up again, my mind seemed to calm down a little bit. I walked cautiously and looked at the passing door with a lot of vigilance. Because I was afraid that the door might open again. Then, my footsteps stopped.

“Shall I go into the room?”

If I open the door and enter the room, there must be a small window. Then, through that window, I could guess at what floor I am right now.

If it was on the lower floor, it would be okay to open the window and jump.

I became depressed as I looked at the star-studded pajamas. My sweat was dry now, and my body was shivering from the cold air as I touched the chilly air in the hallway. There was no such thing as a shoe under my bare feet since I was so frightened that I didn’t even notice.

There were some dark and gloomy substances around my feet, probably because of running down the hallway, and there were also small scratches.

But the current situation was too frightening to worry about all of them. And, I tried to dispel my fear by shaking my own feet.

It’s a mansion, so maybe there’s at least one coat or slippers.

Fidelis thought that since the mansion of the dead is based on a mansion, it didn’t seem strange that one or two of them existed.

I looked around with my blurry eyes, and stood in front of the cleanest door and tried to open it, but it just clicked and didn’t open.

I tried breaking it and forcing it to open, but the moment before I made a loud noise, I thought I might be the first victim to be spotted by the demons if I made a noise here.

My goal was to survive thinly, get out of this mansion as quickly as possible, and return to reality, so I never intended to do anything dangerous. I was going to hide myself like a coward.

I don’t know if that’ll go the way I want it to be… … .

This time I opened the door next to it, but it didn’t open again. I started to turn the doorknobs with a quick action to see if they could be opened. I grabbed them one by one and turned them, and the seventh door opened with a click.

“Uh… . Why did it open… . I suddenly feel scared… … .”

My heart, which had been calmed down, was revived and began to pound. The first sound of the door being opened was not pleasant, but ominous, and I felt like I was going to die. After a few short deep breaths, I glanced around and swallowed my saliva dry.

“Don’t, don’t come out… . I warned you… .”

With an unbelievable pretense, I gently opened the door and stepped in to enter. I felt the cold air on my bare feet. I felt scared to death even if there wasn’t a sound.

“Don’t come out! I am coming in!”

As I held out the candle and entered, I met with the gloomy atmosphere.

“Aww! Shall I go out again! Will it even be okay?!”

I was rolling my feet back and forth before realizing something and bit my mouth.Screaming like this was like calling a ghost. I quietly stepped back again, looked around, and stood still for a moment.

After some time passed and no sound was heard, I went back into the room cautiously, reached out with his candle and looked around the room.

Cobwebs hung in every corner of the ceiling, and the wooden planks on the floor lost their strength and creaked with every step I took.

The bed had long since collapsed, and it looked even more gloomy, with black stains running down the walls and drying out.

There was also a foul odor coming from the room. It smelled like a burnt smell, and it smelled like an old wound in the process of healing. The curtain that covered the glass door leading to the terrace had long since fallen, and only the moonlight leaking through the glass door gave a dim light and also heightened the gloom of the room.

Outside, it was so pitch-black that I couldn’t see anything except the moon. The mansion of the dead itself was a very large mansion, so there were many rooms and it was easy to get lost.

In fact, I was running only looking ahead and came to an unfamiliar place, so I had no way of knowing which room I was in right now.

Uh, it’s just a game anyway.

Fidelis, who had been exposing herself for a while and shrinking her neck in fear, slowly looked around the spacious room. Without hearing anything, she walked towards the glass door, confirming that there was nothing in particular.

Queek, Queek.

Every time I stepped on the floor, I was afraid of the sound of the floor, and tears seemed to flow from my eyes again. As I glanced at the collapsed desk in the corner, a slightly cracked lantern was left haphazardly on the floor.

For the first time, my expression brightened. I quickly lifted the lantern and used the candle to light the lantern.

“The item, ‘Lantern’ has been acquired.”

By seeing something like this, I was able to feel once again that I was really in the game. Seeing the brighter surroundings, I became more comfortable. Sniffling my nose, I headed towards the terrace, where I stopped abruptly.

“Door, I need to close the door for a moment.”

If I left it wide open like this, I wouldn’t know who would suddenly come in and stand behind me. I needed to be strict about that.

I just need to open it a little bit.

As Fidelis turned to head towards the door, she screamed at the person standing in front of the door, not sure if the ghosts had come.

“Ahhhhh!”

In front of the door, with her head bowed, a ghost with burn scars all over her body stood swaying from side to side. Fidelis was so startled that she started pouring out her tears, which had stopped a while ago, even along with her hiccups.

“Black, huh… Tah, hiccup!”

I’m leaving… . Don’t come in!

To keep my mouth shut and to avoid touching the ghost as much as possible, I was busy rolling my eyes to find a way out.

My legs trembled since I couldn’t be able to escape into the hallway because of the ghost blocking her door.But, at that moment, I was delighted to see the glass door to the terrace behind me. Without turning my body, I glanced behind me, moving my stiff legs as far as I could and approached the glass door.

Feeling the cold touch of the glass on my back, I carefully opened the door, but the door wouldn’t open. I looked at the latch to see if the door was locked, but it didn’t.

It was blocked by the mansion itself. My plan to run away by jumping out of the window was ruined.

For a moment, she thought. It’s glass, so it can be broken.

Fidelis, not wanting to lose even her little bit of hope, closed her eyes and slammed the glass door with her fist, but there was only a hollow sound.

It didn’t even budge.

She hit it harder a few more times and the result didn’t change. Fidelis’ body began to tremble more than before, knowing that there was no way for her to escape. Her teeth even made a crackling sound when they touched her fears.

The ghost, who was blocking the door and stood still until now, took a step into the room. A ghastly burnt red piece of raw flesh flowed down and fell to the floor as soon as it entered. At the same time, Fidelis felt as if her heart had fallen into the abyss.

“Oh My God.”

I would rather close my eyes and pass out rather than recalling this scene into my mind. Keeping a certain distance as much as possible from the slowly approaching ghost, Fidelis moved slowly. The same stench that was emanating from the room was also emanating from the ghost.