Emergency Quest (1)
I wasn't fucked.
This was the greatest opportunity of my life.
I stared at the blue interface floating in empty air — the Dead Doctors Gallery — and a snicker slipped out of me. Then the laughter tore loose like I was losing my mind.
The howling of these dead physicians could become my greatest textbook. And my greatest weapon.
Dozens of them. Hundreds. Maybe even thousands — ghosts from every specialty imaginable. A lifetime of knowledge and experience, stacked up over entire careers, now available for real-time browsing through an internet forum.
I reined in the thoughts trembling with excitement and started taking the Gallery interface apart more carefully.
A board list. A write button. A search bar. Everything you'd expect was there.
Then my eyes snagged on a tiny icon in the very top-right corner of the screen.
Looking closer, it was a faintly glowing little shopping cart.
A shop...?
Why was I only seeing this now? Or wait — had it not been there before?
Confusion and curiosity tangled together as I willed myself to click the cart.
The dingy blue Gallery screen shifted smoothly, and an entirely new interface unfolded in front of my eyes.
LP? What was that supposed to be? Legend Points? The instant I tilted my head, a small popup bloomed beneath the letters.
First successful rare-disease diagnosis!
100 LPhas been issued.
"Holy shit..."
There was a reward system too.
I swallowed hard and started scrolling slowly through the shop's product list.
"Whoa..."
My jaw fell open. Every last one of these was rain in a drought for me right now. Especially that fatigue potion.
But I stopped myself before I could hit buy, and kept scrolling. I had a feeling something even more ridiculous was waiting further down.
And my feeling was not wrong.
Near the very bottom of the list, I found a product radiating an aura so overwhelming it made every other item look like a child's toy.
For 30 minutes, a designated Gallery user can possess your body — or float beside you in midair and provide real-time guidance.
PENALTY: After using this skill, you will fall into a state of severe full-body muscle pain for 12 hours.
I stopped breathing. I rubbed my eyes and looked again.
Possession.
Possession? The possession I knew?
My mind went white. The price of 5,000 LP didn't even register.
A dead doctor, inside my body, for thirty minutes?
Just imagining it sent goosebumps racing over my whole skin. This was a broken skill. Literally.
...or float beside you in midair and provide real-time guidance.
If full possession felt like too much, I could take ghost tutoring instead. A transparent mentor hovering at my shoulder, walking me through every move, one by one.
The penalty, of course, was hideous. Severe full-body muscle pain. But if twelve hours of agony let me borrow the hands of a god for thirty minutes, there was no such thing as a better deal.
The problem was the price. 5,000 LP.
I had solved one VEXAS case and received a grand total of 100.
I pressed a hand against my hammering heart and grabbed hold of reason again.
Calm down. Confirm first.
This shop. This LP system. Was it only visible to me — or was every ghost in the Gallery sharing it?
I carefully opened the Gallery's compose window. After a brief hesitation, I typed a single line.
The instant I willed the submit button down, comment notifications started screaming at me in less than a second.
The comment section turned into a war zone in seconds. But out of that chaos, I pulled a single, perfectly clear answer.
That shit doesn't exist.
Nobody had seen it. Not a single one of them knew the shop was there.
...So it only appeared for me.
I understood the rules of this insane world one more time. The Dead Doctors Gallery was a forum for everyone. But the Shop, and the LP — those were privileges granted solely to this world's only survivor. The only living player.
"Alright then. How do I earn 5,000 points?"
I sat up on the bed and stretched. The fatigue that had been crushing my shoulders felt like it was lifting a little, displaced by accomplishment and adrenaline.
So what now? Sprint down to the ER and go hunting for a patient nobody could diagnose? Or blow 50 LP right now and slam a fatigue potion?
That was when it happened.
A crimson warning window slammed into the field of vision I'd been aiming at empty air.
Save the patient's life, and prove your worth!
"...?"
A quest?
Objective: Find the neglected patient and save his life.
Time Limit:00:59:58
Success Reward:1,000 LP, [Unlock Hidden Trait]
Failure Penalty: None
Save a life? The fuck does that mean.
I didn't even have time to chew over the contents of the quest window. I launched off the bed.
A one-hour time limit. It said there was no penalty for failure — but that 1,000 LP and the Unlock Hidden Trait reward were glittering right in front of my face.
I slammed through the Duty Room door and sprinted, gasping, toward the ER.
A dying patient. Where. Right now.
If it was the Emergency Medical Center, it had to be the critical zone. I tore into Area A — the severe patient zone — like a madman. But all that met my eyes were neatly made empty beds and silent monitors. Vacant.
"Damn it!"
Then the Resuscitation Room? The place you sprint to when a cardiac arrest comes in. I spun on my heel and charged toward the Resuscitation Area. Through the glass doors, Resuscitation Rooms 1 through 6 — all of them, spotlessly empty.
The isolation rooms, then?
I clung to that last hope and ran for the isolation ward. I pressed my face to the thick glass and looked through. No. Empty here too.
"What the hell is this."
My breath was scraping the top of my throat. In this entire sprawling Emergency Medical Center, I had checked every place a dying patient could possibly be.
And there was no one. Nobody at all.
Had the system glitched? Or was there a patient somewhere I didn't know about?
I clutched my spinning head and approached the central nursing station. The nurses were busy checking monitors or bustling around with papers in hand, but they didn't look frantic. Just the everyday kind of busy.
I scanned the area around the station, trying to get a read on the current situation.
In the middle of the station, Choi Soo-min — a third-year in Emergency Medicine, the one they called the Angel of the ER — was calmly taking handover. Beside her, Fellow Park Se-young was scowling at a pile of charts. An ordinary scene.
And then my heart dropped straight through the floor at the man standing behind them.
Oh, fuck. Why is the Chief here too.
Chief Park Woong. Guardian of the conference room. A living natural disaster. Why, at this hour, had he descended upon the middle of the ER?
Please don't look at me. Please. I am invisible. I am air.
The instant I offered up that desperate prayer, the Chief's head turned slowly in my direction.
Ah, fuck. Eye contact.
Chief Park Woong squinted at me for a second, then something seemed to click, and he pointed a finger straight at me.
"Ah! Right, right, you're that... Han... doctor, is it?"
Damn it. If you can't avoid it, enjoy it?
No. If you can't avoid it, grovel.
My body moved at a speed approaching spinal reflex.
"YES!!!! CHIEEEF!!!!!!!!!! I AM HAN!! HYUN!! JAE!!"
The answer came out closer to a roar, and I folded at the waist to a perfect ninety degrees. I didn't know. I was just going to jingle and grovel my way through this crisis and see what happened.
The Chief let out a single dry cough — whether he was satisfied by the volume or simply speechless, I couldn't tell — and then he spoke.
"Haha, that's right. I got a call from Rheumatology earlier. They were singing our Dr. Han's praises — said you've been studying exceptionally hard."
No, sir, that was me cheating off the Gallery, was not a sentence I could say out loud, so I activated the only survival skill a first-year in the working world had managed to learn.
I squeezed out the voice of a freshman burning with academic passion, overflowing with gratitude.
"YES!!!! THASSS RIGHT SIR!!!!!!! I BELIEVE IT IS A PHYSICIAN'S NATURAL DUTY TO ACQUIRE THE LATEST MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE DAY AND NIGHT FOR THE SAKE OF THE PATIENT!!!!"
The flattery I had scraped together from the very bottom of my soul cut through the cold air of the ER.
I could see Senior Choi Soo-min's shoulders trembling. Fellow Park Se-young had buried her face in the charts.
They're laughing right now, aren't they.
The Chief stared at me with round, vacant eyes, then couldn't hold it in any longer and burst into booming laughter.
"Hahahaha! I like that fire, huhuhuhu!"
His heavy hand thumped my shoulder. I stayed bent at the waist, waiting for this cheerful storm to pass.
But where the hell had this emergency quest even triggered?
That was the only thought left in my head.
Where was the patient.