How Does It Feel To Be In B-grade Horror Game

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Translator – Zack
Editor – Asdf
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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 <The Mansion of the Dead>. 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.

* * *

<The Mansion of the Dead> 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 <The Mansion of the Dead> 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 <The Mansion of the Dead> 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 <The Mansion of the Dead>, which was made after being evaluated by the public.

* * *

It was safe to say that Ye-in knew very little about <The Mansion of the Dead> 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 <The Mansion of the Dead> 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 <The Mansion of the Dead>, 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.’