Mechanical Alchemist

Having personally experienced it once before at the Storm Manor, Su Lun was no longer much surprised when he saw his surroundings suddenly change.

"The basement of this house… is actually a 'cursed space'?"

Su Lun furrowed his brows.

Suddenly, from the basement of number 88 on Ginkgo Street, he arrived at an unfamiliar scene and immediately understood why the previous tenant's corpse, that of a blind man, had disappeared.

If things were as expected, it had been sucked into this special space.

"Cursed spaces" are usually explained as special spaces that gradually form over time due to the spillage of energy from ancient powerful cursed items (yes, but not entirely so). Because there are exceptions, the specific causes have not been completely unraveled.

This is a kind of sub-space similar to the storage ring's folding space, like bubbles in the air, containing certain special laws. It can also be understood as an existence similar to "game instances," with plots, monsters, physical entry, and real death.

The scenes within the space mostly derive from some memory or obsession of the cursed item's original owner; a nightmare, a life-and-death experience… they are usually bizarre and fraught with danger.

Furthermore, once you enter, it means you can only leave alive by finding the correct solution. Otherwise, you'll be trapped here forever.

Of course, if you successfully break the puzzle, you might be able to see the "powerful cursed item" that created the special space.

....

"A cursed space activated by just a thought… quite sinister."

Although he had inexplicably been drawn into a cursed space, Su Lun quickly realized something.

Typical "cursed space" entrances are easy to identify, usually appearing as a mass of dark, twisted light gate, or some sort of mirage. You'd be sucked in only if you got close enough.

But this one seemed to be quite special.

It's thought-activated.

If Su Lun had not considered the abnormalities of the house earlier and just been an ordinary tenant, he probably wouldn't have encountered any problems.

It was because he thought about it that he triggered this special condition for entering.

Just as the All-knowing Eye had identified: "When you realize its existence, only then does it exist."

However, Su Lun's nature allowed him to immediately calm down.

If dying in this space was inevitable, panic was purely superfluous.

If there were a way to break the game, staying calm would only increase his chances of survival.

Like the opening of many horror games he had played in the past, Su Lun instantly entered a state of thought. His mind calmly and carefully recalled all the useful clues, observing everything in front of him.

Last time, in the cursed space at Storm Manor, the biggest boss was "Ghost Seed" Miss Pestoya, whom he managed to get sent out after successfully clearing the game by outsmarting her.

With that experience, Su Lun felt he would certainly find a way to break the game.

Either by wit or by gun.

The place appeared to be a hospital, with walls painted white on all sides, and iron chairs outside the consulting rooms. There were no windows, just room after room on both sides. The lighting fluctuated between bright and dark, and the nighttime wind that poured in howled like ghosts, right out of a scene from a horror movie.

He felt the gun at his waist; it was still there, and his storage ring had come along with him. This was good news.

He also used the All-knowing Eye to look at the things around him and could normally identify them just as in the real world.

What: [Damaged wall tiles], [Hexagonal gas lamp], [Rusted iron chair], [A lump of moldy dog crap]...

After observing the area for a while, Su Lun did not find any useful information.

But from any angle, the corridor was eerily quiet.

Su Lun did not move around at random.

Suddenly, he thought of something and said to himself, "If I'm now in a special space, then the All-knowing Eye should also be able to reveal something..."

With this in mind, Su Lun dilated his pupils and began to identify everything in his field of vision as "a single item."

The next second, he indeed saw a different identification result.

[A special scene condensed from an obsession]

Description: This is a scene from the inpatient department of Havier Hospital in Old Lington City a thousand years ago;

Resolution method: Find the owner of this resentment, recite its full name, and you will be able to break free from this obsession.

....

"Seems like I've found a way through?"

Su Lun looked at the hint in front of him, his brows slightly raised.

The All-knowing Eye indeed did not disappoint, directly telling him how to leave this cursed space.

But upon closer thinking, he spotted something amiss.

"Recite the 'full name' of the person with the fixation? This... seems to be the key point."

Su Lun sharply caught on to some crucial details.

Identification revealed the method to pass the level, but because it couldn't see, the All-knowing Eye also didn't know the name of the resentful spirit.

Of course, he could take a gamble, confront that big BOSS when he saw it, and try an on-the-spot identification. It would be a race to see whether it killed him first or if he managed to recite its name first.

Moreover, if the identification turned up a category like [Human] or an introduction to [Resentment] instead of a name, Su Lun felt he might just drop dead on the spot.

"I remember the scene I saw earlier was called the 'Havier's Resentful Spirit Morgue', right? So is the big BOSS currently in the morgue?"

Su Lun pondered for a moment, stood in place for twenty seconds, then roughly knew what he had to do next.

He was quite familiar with this opening scenario.

Now that he knew the method to break the curse, the best option would be to find clues elsewhere in the hospital, figure out the 'resentful spirit owner's full name, recite it, and get out.

The worst-case scenario would be that he had to go to the morgue and face the big BOSS head-on.

An even worse situation would be if the big BOSS roamed around the world, with a sudden face-to-face encounter...

....

"If this space's resentful spirit is as intelligent as Pestoia, maybe passing through won't be so troublesome. If it's a monster that only knows how to kill... it's all down to luck."

Su Lun did not dare let his guard down.

The morgue was a key word; such places are usually at the very bottom of the hospital.

Su Lun did not plan to go there directly.

His target was clear; he intended to look for the records room or some kind of duty office. Although this was a thousand-year-old hospital, judging from its scale, it should have quite a few staff members, likely to have some scheduling management system in place.

Finding today's duty roster should give him an idea of the people in the hospital; perhaps he could directly find information on that 'resentful spirit owner'.

The long corridor was empty, the gas lamps flickering, creating a blurry sensation in his vision as if it was veiled by a black curtain.

Su Lun drew his gun, lowered his breathing, and tried not to make a sound.

He quietly approached the door of a sickroom, glanced inside through the small window on the door. The room was lined with seven or eight beds draped in white sheets, but it was empty.

A small card hung on the door with the words: On-duty nurse Janice George.

The hospital was unnaturally quiet.

"That's not right... Why isn't there a single person?"

Su Lun glanced at the sickroom and then at the nurses' station not far away, not a person in sight, "Even in a horror scenario, shouldn't there be at least one zombie or ghostly figure?"

The moment this thought flashed through his mind, his gaze suddenly sharpened, and he keenly sensed something.

Without any hesitation, he pulled out his gun and fired behind him.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

Two quick and soft gunshots shattered the eerie silence.

The [Blue Demon] was outfitted with a box suppressor on the muzzle, so the sound wasn't too loud, and it didn't carry far in these confined corridors.

"Huh..."

After firing two shots, Su Lun focused his vision and saw two bullets embedded in the wall, his face revealing a trace of shock: "I actually missed?"

The situation had become somewhat strange.

His pupils contracted slightly, his back against the wall, his gaze piercingly scanning the empty corridor before him.

Su Lun clearly remembered seeing a figure in the reflection of the sickroom door's glass—a female nurse with a green face and black eyes, her body covered in blood, holding a knife and standing right behind him at an angle...

He instinctively fired, only to find that he had somehow missed the target.

And not only did he miss, but the knife-wielding female nurse had disappeared?

....

"Could it be a 'ghost type'?"

Su Lun's expression became slightly more solemn.