Lucas opened his eyes.
His vision blurred at first, but soon cleared. This wasn't the padded, sterile-white room of a psychiatric ward anymore.
Instead, he found himself standing in a dimly lit corridor of what looked like an old teaching building.
He knew it was a corridor based on one eerie cue—the sharp, almost metallic clang of a class bell ringing nearby. It echoed through the long hallway, jerking his senses fully awake.
The corridor was dark. The overhead lights flickered between moments of dull orange and dim white, casting dancing shadows along the damp, wooden floorboards. A strong odor of rotting wood and layers of dust filled the air, attacking his nostrils and confirming one thing—this place had been abandoned for a long time.
Suddenly, a line of text blinked into his vision. A glowing panel only he could see.
> [Welcome to the Thriller Game. Complete dungeons to earn scores and rewards based on performance.]
Lucas stared, unblinking.
Three months ago, the world had changed overnight.
Supernatural energy had descended across the globe.
Random people—without warning, without reason—were chosen and dragged into a deadly new reality: the Thriller Game.
There were no invitations.
No pattern.
No way to opt out.
You were either chosen... or you weren't.
Players were forced to survive inside haunted copies—twisted, game-like dungeons haunted by ghosts and eldritch horrors. If they failed, they died. Simple as that.
Worse still, the entire experience was broadcast live for the world to see.
The horror wasn't just real for the players. It was entertainment for everyone else.
In front of Lucas, the translucent panel continued loading:
> [Copy Loading... Done]
> [Copy Name: Changming Ghost School]
[Level: 1 (Player Mortality Rate: <50%)]
[Mode: Single Player]
> [Player Information Loading...]
> [Player: Lucas]
[Health: 100 – (Zero means death. Always watch your health.)]
[Stamina: 90 – (In a world filled with burned-out workers, you're ahead of the curve.)]
[Strength: 50 – (Strong enough to fend off a minor ghost child)]
[Luck: 0 – (Your life clearly hasn't been a cakewalk)]
[Intellect: 90 – (Your mind is your greatest weapon)]
[Spirit: 100 – (You're disturbingly calm… almost inhumanly so)]
[Skills: None]
At the bottom of the screen, a small evaluation:
> [Comprehensive Rating: G – You are a complete novice with zero foundation. Do your best to survive.]
Lucas looked down and noticed another menu tab: Inventory.
> [Item: Kitchen Knife – An ordinary household blade. Hasn't even cut a fish before.]
The slender young man was dressed in a white hospital gown that draped loosely over his frame. The kitchen knife in his hand glinted dully under the flickering lights.
It was a privilege given to him by the doctors.
Normally, no psychiatric patient would be allowed to have something so dangerous in their room—let alone carry it around.
But Lucas had always been a special case.
He had held onto that knife every day in the ward. And now, outside the asylum, it was the only thing anchoring him.
He clutched the handle tightly and scanned the hallway.
The knife had become his only source of security.
Suddenly, the panel flipped again:
> [Your live broadcast has started. Current Viewers: 0]
Lucas didn't even blink.
So what if no one was watching? He didn't care about viewers. All he cared about now was one thing—survival.
Another voice echoed in his mind—a mechanical, emotionless female tone:
> [Host has entered a danger zone. Activating Danger Assessment System…]
> [Modeling environment...]
> [Generating danger assessment based on host attributes...]
Lucas's expression remained unreadable.
This "Danger Assessment System" had been with him since childhood.
He remembered once telling adults about it. That was the beginning of the end.
No one believed him.
They called it delusion.
And that's how Lucas ended up in the psychiatric hospital.
Being "mentally ill" was just a label. A convenient way for people to ignore what they couldn't understand.
But Lucas didn't resent them.
He sighed quietly to himself.
That part of his life was behind him now.
> [Changming University, First-Floor Corridor: Low-Level Danger]
The system's messages were invisible to everyone else.
They wouldn't appear in the public live feed.
Lucas turned his gaze toward the left side of the hallway.
> [Class 1A: Moderate Danger]
[Class 1B: Moderate Danger]
[Class 1C: Moderate Danger]
One after another, the system highlighted zones with increasing threat levels.
Meanwhile, back in the Thriller Game's live broadcast center, new viewers were starting to tune in.
In the section labeled "Newcomer Zone," Lucas's feed was beginning to attract attention.
The image of a young man in a psychiatric hospital gown, tightly gripping a kitchen knife and cautiously peering through a haunted corridor, caught people off guard.
> "Wait… what's with the hospital clothes?"
"Is he from the asylum?"
"Yeah… Second District Hospital. Psychiatric ward."
"Hold on… is he insane?"
"Then why the hell does he have 100 Spirit?!"
The last line caused a stir.
> "One hundred spirit points? That's crazy!"
"If it were an old veteran who's been through a dozen copies, sure. But a first-timer? No emotion, no panic?"
"Wasn't the last person with 100 Spirit still ranked top of the global leaderboard?"
"Maybe being mentally ill gives you a hidden bonus in this game?"
"Nah… Spirit isn't just about being calm. It affects how resistant you are to mind attacks, illusions, psychic damage, and fear-based monsters."
"Even if he looks nervous, he's holding up way better than most rookies. No screaming. No panic."
Someone zoomed in on the feed.
> "Oh crap… He's in Changming Ghost School?"
"That's the hardest starting dungeon!"
"NPCs in there actively attack. They don't wait. Newbies with weak stats don't usually survive."
"I remember the last time a batch of rookies spawned there. Not a single one made it out."
Back in the game, Lucas's live panel updated:
> [78 viewers now watching your live stream. Bullet chat function unlocked.]
> [Audience participation is encouraged. Add more chaos and fun to this horror show!]
And then, the bullet chats started rolling.
> "Is that a kitchen knife? LOL."
"Who let the psycho cook?"
"He's gonna get rekt in five minutes."
"Calling it now—he's not making it past the first ghost."
Lucas didn't react. He wasn't reading the chats.
He was too focused on his surroundings.
The dim hallway buzzed with an eerie silence, broken only by the distant creaks of floorboards and faint whispers, almost like children giggling.
He tightened his grip on the kitchen knife.
He might have been thrown into this nightmare unexpectedly. He might be unarmed, untrained, and alone.
But he wasn't afraid.
Not yet.
His eyes scanned the darkness ahead.
"Survive," he whispered to himself. "That's all that matters."
---