Chapter 49
The mage and the heretic inquisitor.
Words that an ordinary person would never know spilled from the bastard's mouth. Ian frowned and pressed the revolver's muzzle harder against the center of his forehead.
“……You're not an ordinary person.”
“Do you really think an ordinary person could keep his wits about him in a place like this? You’re a mage, yet you’re naïve. Looks like you still don’t have much experience.”
“A Bureau agent?”
Ignoring the man's words, Ian leaned in and muttered.
“The smell coming off you is mixed with gunpowder. That means you handle guns, and the only place that uses firearms regularly is the Bureau. The police don't open fire that often. And the suit hanging on the coat rack. That's no ordinary item. Something special was woven into it. I've seen something similar before.”
“……Oh.”
“The Bureau's response teams don't operate alone. And yet you're trapped here by yourself, which means you're not on a response team. That leaves reconnaissance or a basic scouting mission, and there's a high chance you came here and got trapped. Being admitted as a patient despite having no injuries, cough, hngh…… how did you manage that?”
“There's a smell of gunpowder on your breath. Were you hurt?”
“Answer the question.”
Click.
Ian cocked the revolver's hammer with his thumb and gave it a flick. The man stared at the sight for a moment before raising both hands and answering.
“Everything you said is right. I'm with the Bureau, Recon Team 5. Park Hee-soo. Team 5 went out on exploration missions one by one, but every last one of them died. I'm the sole survivor.”
“…….”
“I was admitted as a patient because of a chronic condition. This damn hospital even checked the illness I already had and forcibly admitted me.”
“A chronic condition?”
“It's nothing. And I don't intend to tell you. I'm not stupid enough to tell a mage about my illness when I don't even know what kind of magic you use.”
Park Hee-soo gave a faint smile and wiggled his fingers. Ian looked down at him coldly for a moment before lowering the gun. A vivid red imprint from the muzzle remained between his brows.
“Do you know a man named Park Sang-cheol?”
“He's my colleague who wrote the rulebook. So you've read it too, I see. Was it useful?”
“Yes. Though the chance he’s still alive is…….”
“None. I already confirmed his body had become a corpse. He was probably disassembled as a ‘donor’.”
Park Hee-soo gave a bitter smile for a moment as he said that, then returned to his easygoing expression.
“So? What brings our big-shot mage and the Vatican inquisitor to visit me? An escape, I take it?”
“The sooner we talk, the better. You’re right. We need to work together.”
Ian perched on the windowsill and said, spinning the revolver's cylinder. Cecilia kept watch around them by his side.
Now that she'd realized he was a Bureau agent rather than a civilian, perhaps she decided there was no need to hold back, so she didn't object to Ian's forceful attitude.
“If it’s cooperation, then you mean the discharge procedure, right?”
Park Hee-soo asked with a serious expression. Ian nodded.
“Who’s your attending physician?”
“A neurosurgeon. If I want discharge approval, I’ll probably have to get it from him…….”
He tapped his temple with a finger and shook his head.
“As long as I’ve got this damn chronic illness, I probably won’t be judged cured. Escape will be difficult.”
“…….”
“But it's not like there's no way at all.”
Park Hee-soo rolled up his sleeves and sat cross-legged.
“Get me a coin. I’ll use my ability with it.”
“……You’re just giving orders with no explanation at all.”
“You think I’d tell a mage about my ability…… hmm. No. I guess this much is fine. My ability is coin flipping. How’s that, cool, right?”
Ian didn't answer and just flicked the revolver. Park Hee-soo scratched his head awkwardly.
“When I flip a coin, if it lands heads, good luck happens to me. If it lands tails, bad luck happens. My chronic illness is something that arose from the aftereffects of bad luck.”
“……Hmm.”
“But the price of the ability is that it consumes coins. There’s also the side effect of 1 million won disappearing from my bank account…… Anyway, the only coins I have right now are 10-won coins. I need at least a 500-won coin to use my ability.”
“A finicky ability.”
Cecilia, who had been listening quietly, grumbled.
“If luck comes up, does the chronic illness get better?”
“It tends to produce the kind of luck I want, so it should get better.”
“What if bad luck comes up?”
“Haha. Based on my analysis so far, the chance of bad luck is 20 percent. In other words, it almost never comes up.”
“Twenty percent isn’t exactly a low probability. So what happens if it does come up?”
At Cecilia's calm question, Park Hee-soo thought hard before answering.
“No idea. Either way, I’d be screwed. I’m already in a bad-luck state as it is.”
Ian frowned at the breezy answer. Rising from the windowsill, he let out a long breath.
“Hoo…… Let me ask you one thing. Are there any other patients in this hospital who’ve kept their sanity?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that the lower the floors go, the more the place becomes something that can hardly be called a ‘hospital’ anymore. This is the last line here. Even the place that can be considered relatively safe ends at the 25th floor.”
“You went up there and came back?”
“One of my teammates explored the floors alone. It’s solid information, so you can trust it.”
He quietly mulled it over while watching Park Hee-soo speak in a confident tone.
The claim that it gets more dangerous the higher you go is probably true. The number 66 itself is incredibly ominous, and above all, the smell of blood had grown stronger as they climbed. There had also been a heavy stench of filth that was hard to explain.
Still, it wasn’t certain. It was, quite literally, a guess. Just a hypothesis.
He even considered checking for himself, but decided there was no need to take the risk and gave up. The fact that believing it wouldn’t put him at a disadvantage also helped in his judgment.
Ian nodded vaguely and said to Park Hee-soo.
“Does the coin’s size matter? Or its value?”
“Both the value and the size. It has to be at least around 500 won, and worth that much too.”
“Bills won’t work, I’m guessing. Foreign currency is okay too?”
“Yeah.”
Ian let out a thoughtful grunt and checked his wallet. But all he had were cards. There wasn’t a single coin or bill.
If he’d known this would happen, he should have carried cash around like usual. He clicked his tongue lightly, put his wallet away, and turned to Cecilia.
“……Cecilia, do you happen to have any coins?”
“Uh…… I’ve got a 2-euro coin.”
She took a coin out of her pocket, one engraved with a map of Europe.
2 euros. A currency worth a little over 2,000 won.
Park Hee-soo's eyes lit up as soon as he saw the coin used in Europe.
“As expected of a Vatican inquisitor. You sure have a lot of money. Give it here. I’ll flip it right away and hit the jackpot for you.”
“……Your way of talking is awful. I’ll give it to you, but…….”
With a reluctant expression, Cecilia handed over the coin she had been holding. Park Hee-soo looked down at the coin, yellow in the middle and surrounded by a white outer ring, then carefully pinched it between his thumb and index finger. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath.
“Please, good luck. Please, seriously, good luck. If I die here, it’ll be a truly stupid death……!”
“…….”
“Mage! Heretic Inquisitor! Watch me!”
Park Hee-soo snapped his eyes open and flicked his finger. He quickly caught the coin as it shot upward with a clear ringing sound, then whirled to Cecilia.
“How are the pictures on the front and back different?”
“……The front is just a picture. The back has a number and a map of Europe on it.”
“Good. Here we go!”
Park Hee-soo shouted as he spread open the hand that had been holding the coin. Ian and Cecilia looked down at the image on the coin resting in his palm, and immediately frowned.
“Ah.”
There was no room for doubt.
Within Park Hee-soo’s scar-covered hand,
the clearly embossed number 2 and a map of Europe were smiling brightly at the three of them.
“Fuck.”
Rattle!!
The moment Park Hee-soo let out the curse, the ward door burst open and a swarm of nurses poured in. Then they shouted in unison.
“Emergency patient! Emergency patient! Take them to the operating table immediately! Nurse Kim, please summon all the doctors to Operating Room 3!”
Even at a glance, those were words that were definitely not good news. Ian spat out a curse, secretly swapped his grimoire, and activated his magic, grabbing each nurse one by one.
Crack!
The nurses, unable to resist the magic of recreation, were turned into chunks of flesh and sprawled across the floor. It was an unintended time for acquiring materials, but Ian instead glared at Park Hee-soo.
“What are you going to do now? The moment you touched the nurses, it was over. They’ll keep coming now.”
“……You’re the one who touched them, weren’t you? I didn’t do anything.”
“If you’ve got time to talk nonsense, think of a plan. Before I toss you onto the operating table as is.”
When Ian growled, Park Hee-soo dropped the jokes, took off his patient gown, and changed into his suit. After tying his necktie with practiced ease, he looked at Ian and Cecilia, who had settled into battle stances, and moved his lips as if to speak.
“At this point, there’s no helping it. We’ll use every means at our disposal to put this hospital out of business. Then we’ll go down to the basement through the emergency exit, hijack a car, and move to the edge of this space!”
“Are you sure that’s a useful plan?”
“It’s one of the Bureau’s manuals for when you’re trapped in a spatial mystery with no apparent way out! The conditions for using it are extremely complicated, and it requires luck and force, so almost nobody has tried it—but with a mage and a heretic inquisitor together, it might not be impossible!”
“How can you be sure there’ll be a car?”
“There’s always a way, so don’t worry about it!”
With that, he lifted the mattress from the bed and took out the shotgun and magazines hidden inside. Then he loaded it skillfully and shoved the cigarette pack from the drawer into his pocket.
“Let’s go! We’re only temporary allies for now!”
“……You sure are all mouth for someone who pulled the bad-luck result.”
“A dangerous combination is born!”
Park Hee-soo neatly ignored Ian’s words, racked the shotgun, and grinned. Ian let out a long sigh and put a cigarette in his mouth.
When he casually shifted his gaze beyond the window, he saw the patients who had been standing blankly in the open area charging toward them.
Crunch.
Ian bit down and crushed the cigarette filter.