A mage and an inquisitor.
Words no ordinary person could ever know had come out of the bastard’s mouth. Ian narrowed his eyes and pressed the muzzle harder into the spot between the man’s brows.
“...You’re not an ordinary person.”
“You think an ordinary person could keep his sanity in a place like this? You’re a mage, but you’re naive. Guess you don’t have much experience yet.”
“Are you an agent of the Bureau?”
Ignoring the man’s words, Ian leaned in and muttered.
“There’s the smell of gunpowder mixed into the scent coming off you. That means you handle firearms, and the Bureau is the only place that uses guns regularly. The police don’t fire theirs that often. And that suit hanging on the rack. It isn’t ordinary. It’s woven from some special thread. I’ve seen something similar before.”
“...Oh.”
“The Bureau’s response teams don’t move alone. But since you’re trapped here by yourself, that means you’re not part of a response team. Then there’s a high chance you came here for reconnaissance or a basic survey and got trapped. The fact that you were admitted as a patient despite having no injuries—cough, hngh... How did that happen?”
“You smell burnt at the throat. You hurt?”
“Answer the question.”
Click.
Ian thumbed back the revolver’s hammer and toyed with it. The man stared at the sight for a moment, then raised both hands and answered.
“You’re right about everything. Bureau, Reconnaissance Division, Team Five. Bak Huisu. The members of Team Five set out on exploration missions one after another, and all of them died. I’m the last survivor.”
“...”
“I was admitted as a patient because of a chronic illness. This damned hospital even checked illnesses I already had and forcibly admitted me.”
“A chronic illness?”
“Nothing serious. And I don’t plan on telling you. I’m not stupid enough to tell a mage, whose magic I don’t even know, what illness I have.”
Bak Huisu smiled faintly and wriggled his fingers. Ian looked down at him coldly for a moment, then withdrew the muzzle. A clear red mark from the barrel remained between his brows.
“Do you know the name Bak Sangcheol?”
“He was my colleague who wrote the rulebook. Since you know it, I guess you read it too. Was it useful?”
“Yes. Though the chances he’s still alive are...”
“None. I already confirmed he’d become a corpse. His body was probably dismantled as a ‘donor.’”
For an instant, Bak Huisu smiled bitterly as he said that, then returned to his relaxed expression.
“So? Why did our esteemed Mr. Mage and the Vatican’s inquisitor come looking for me? Escape, I assume?”
“The faster this conversation goes, the better. You’re right. We need your cooperation.”
Ian perched on the windowsill and spoke while spinning the revolver’s cylinder. Cecilia stood beside him, keeping watch on their surroundings.
Perhaps deciding there was no reason to be restrained now that their opponent was not an ordinary person but a Bureau agent, she did not object to Ian’s coercive attitude.
“By cooperation, you mean the discharge procedure?”
Bak Huisu asked with a serious expression. Ian nodded.
“Who is your attending physician?”
“A neurosurgeon. I’ll probably have to get permission from him to be discharged, but...”
He tapped his head with a finger and shook it.
“As long as I have this damned chronic illness, I doubt I’ll be declared fully recovered. Escape will be difficult.”
“...”
“But that doesn’t mean there’s no way at all.”
Bak Huisu rolled up his sleeves and sat cross-legged.
“Bring me a coin. I’ll use my ability with it.”
“...You’re giving orders right away without explaining anything.”
“As if I’d tell a mage about my ability... Hm. No, actually. I can tell you this much. My ability is coin tossing. Well? Pretty cool, right?”
Ian said nothing and merely twitched the revolver. Bak Huisu scratched his head awkwardly.
“When I flip a coin, if it lands heads, good luck happens to me. If it lands tails, misfortune happens. This chronic illness of mine happened as an aftereffect of misfortune.”
“...Hm.”
“But the coin is consumed as the price of the ability. There’s also the side effect of one million won disappearing from my bank account... Anyway. The only coins I have right now are ten-won coins. I need at least a five-hundred-won coin to use the ability.”
“What a troublesome ability.”
Cecilia, who had been listening quietly, grumbled.
“If you get good luck, will your chronic illness get better?”
“It tends to produce the luck I want. So it probably will.”
“And if you get misfortune?”
“Haha. According to my analysis so far, the chance of misfortune is twenty percent. Which means it almost never happens.”
“Twenty percent isn’t a low probability. So what happens if it comes up?”
At Cecilia’s calm question, Bak Huisu pondered deeply before answering.
“No idea. Anyway, I’ll be fucked. Especially since I’m already in a state of misfortune.”
At his refreshingly blunt answer, Ian frowned. He rose from the windowsill and let out a long breath.
“Phew... Let me ask one thing. Are there any other patients in this hospital who are still sane?”
“No idea. But I do know that the higher the floor, the more you start getting places that can no longer be called a ‘hospital.’ This floor is the Maginot Line. Even the places you can consider relatively safe end at the twenty-fifth floor.”
“You went up there?”
“One of my team members explored the floors alone. It’s solid information, so you can trust it.”
Ian quietly turned it over in his head as he stared at Bak Huisu, whose tone was full of certainty.
The statement that things became more dangerous the higher one went was likely true. The number sixty-six itself was ominous enough, and more than anything, the smell of blood had grown thicker the higher they climbed. The air had also been filled with a stench of filth that was difficult to describe.
Still, it wasn’t certain. It was exactly what it sounded like—conjecture. Just a hypothesis.
He considered confirming it himself, but gave up since there seemed no need to take the risk. The fact that believing the information wouldn’t put him at a disadvantage also helped his judgment.
Ian nodded roughly and spoke to Bak Huisu.
“Is the coin’s size what matters? Or its value?”
“Both value and size. The size has to be at least about that of a five-hundred-won coin, and the value has to be around that too.”
“Bills won’t work, then. What about foreign currency?”
“That’s fine.”
Ian hummed in understanding and checked his wallet. But all he had were cards. Not a single coin or bill.
If he’d known this would happen, he would have carried cash normally. He clicked his tongue lightly, put away his wallet, and turned to Cecilia.
“...Cecilia, do you happen to have any coins?”
“Uh... I have one two-euro coin.”
She took a coin engraved with a map of Europe from her pocket.
Two euros. A currency worth over two thousand won in Korean money.
The moment Bak Huisu saw the coin used only in Europe, his eyes lit up.
“As expected of a Vatican inquisitor. You sure have plenty of money. Give it here. I’ll flip it right away and hit the jackpot.”
“...I really don’t like the way you talk. I’ll give it to you, but...”
With a reluctant expression, Cecilia handed him the coin she was holding. Bak Huisu looked down at the coin, yellow in the middle and encircled by a white rim, then carefully pinched it between his thumb and index finger. Then he closed his eyes and let out a long breath.
“Please be luck. Seriously, please be luck. If I die here, it’ll be such a pointless death...!”
“...”
“Mage! Inquisitor! Watch over me!”
Bak Huisu’s eyes flashed open, and he snapped his fingers. The coin shot upward with a clear ring; he quickly caught it and whipped around to Cecilia.
“How are the pictures on heads and tails different?”
“...The front is just a picture. The back has a number and a map of Europe.”
“Good. Here we gooo!”
With a shout, Bak Huisu opened the hand holding the coin. Ian and Cecilia looked down at the design of the coin resting in his palm. And immediately frowned.
“Ah.”
There was no room for doubt.
Inside Bak Huisu’s scar-covered palm,
the clearly engraved number 2 and map of Europe were smiling brightly up at the three of them.
“Fuck me.”
Rattle!!
The instant Bak Huisu spat out the curse, the hospital room door burst open and nurses swarmed in. Then they shouted in unison.
“Emergency patient! Emergency patient! We’re taking him to the operating table immediately! Nurse Gim! Call all the doctors to Operating Room Three!”
Words that were clearly not good news, even at a rough listen, spilled from their mouths. Ian cursed and stealthily switched grimoires. Then he grabbed the nurses one by one and activated his magic.
Crack!
The nurses could not dare resist the magic of Re-Creation and became chunks of flesh strewn across the floor. It was an unintended time for acquiring materials, but instead of rejoicing, Ian glared at Bak Huisu.
“What are we going to do now? The moment we laid hands on the nurses, it was already over. They’ll keep swarming in from now on.”
“...Aren’t you the one who laid hands on them? I didn’t do anything.”
“If you have time to talk bullshit, hurry up and think of a plan. Before I throw you onto the operating table myself.”
When Ian growled, Bak Huisu dropped the jokes as well, took off his patient gown, and changed into his suit. After putting on his tie with practiced ease, he looked at Ian and Cecilia as they prepared for battle and moved his lips.
“Now that it’s come to this, we have no choice. We use every means available to put this hospital out of business. Then we go down through the emergency stairs, seize a car, and move to the boundary of this space!”
“Are you sure that’s a useful plan?”
“It’s one of the Bureau’s manuals for when you’re trapped inside a spatial-type mystery with no visible way out! The conditions to use it are extremely complicated, and it requires luck and military force, so almost no one has attempted it, but with a mage and an inquisitor together, it shouldn’t be impossible!”
“How are you sure there’ll be a car?”
“There’s a method, so don’t worry!”
As he said that, he lifted the mattress off the bed and pulled out a shotgun and magazines he had hidden inside. Then he skillfully loaded it and shoved the pack of cigarettes he had placed in the drawer into his pocket.
“Let’s go! Just for now, we’re a temporary alliance!”
“...You drew misfortune yourself, and yet you’re all mouth.”
“A dangerous combination has been born!”
Bak Huisu neatly ignored Ian’s words, racked the shotgun’s pump, and grinned. Ian let out a deep sigh and put a cigarette in his mouth.
When he shifted his gaze slightly beyond the window, he saw the patients who had been standing blankly in the vacant lot running toward them.
Crunch.
Ian bit down and crushed the cigarette filter.