"Alright... alright... this is... good...right?" The girl mumbled to herself as she inspected the two mangled beasts from afar.
The beast atop the closet tilted its head at her words before it noiselessly jumped off of the iron wardrobe and onto the floor, its claws clicking as the metal like bone hit the tiled floor, causing new cracks to form in the abused structure.
Hayleen flinched and stepped further away from the beast, the thing ignored her and curled up in the ripped bedding that was strewn across the floor.
Confused and apprehensive she leaned against one of the more intact walls, she fished her phone out from her pocket.
She opened the nameless app and clicked on the Library, scrolling through the entries she had already read through and found what she was looking for, three new entries that had yet to grey out.
____________
The Nameless
The Nameless are a type of monster that can often be found in laboratories or places where their bodies were disfigured and experimented on, these creatures often have a humanoid appearance with one or more disfigured limbs.
They long for nothing more than their name.
___________
Bathroom ghost
The bathroom ghost is a type of evil ghost that, upon dying, will try drowning everyone else that steps into the room they take as their territory.
_________
Nightmare Nurse
The nightmare nurse is a demonic ghost that wanders hospitals where unlawful and inhumane things were done to the patients, while alive they may have worked in these places and upon their death they will forever wander these haunted halls as punishment for the sins they have committed.
_________
"..." Hayleen sighed soundlessly and glanced back at the beast now curled up on the overthrown bed, hefting her weapon onto her shoulder she stepped inside the now bloody bathroom and inspected the two monsters on the floor.
She turned her attention on the nurse first, using her foot to turn the carcass over and saw a nametag.
"So that's where she went." Hayleen muttered and turned her gaze away from the gutted corpse.
The other monster was wet from head to toe and as pale as a sheet of paper, the hospital gown she was wearing smeared in diluted blood and other gore, an arm was torn off and the head mangled, the face unrecognizable.
The floor under them was soaked in blood, but a small glint in the growing puddle caught her attention and she bent down to pick it up, it was a key around a chain.
The only living being in the bathroom picked the key up by the cord it was strung on and let it dangle in front of her face as she looked at it dubiously, the number 278 was engraved in it, clotted in blood the key was, it made the numbers stand out against the metallic grey and gave the number an ominous look, as if it was warning whomever picked it up away from the room and the secrets locked within.
A bit of blood ran down the key and the cord, Hayleen wondered whom the key had belonged to, but had no way of finding out unless she wished to wake the dormant monster in the other room.
She gave the beasts another glance, wondering, and her thoughts turned to another monster that she had yet to see.
"What happened to the thing in my shadow?" She wondered as she turned to gaze into her shadow... only to nearly shriek as a pair of red lights looked back at her.
"Ah, there you are.." She said dryly, chiding herself for yet again courting disaster.
Her phone chimed in her pocket and she took it out, wondering what gave her the notification, as she had gone into "Do not disturb" mode after she had begun exploring the time loop more thoroughly.
[The item [Shadow Hound (Spectre)] is about to be taken out, do you wish to proceed?]
An option popped up and covered her home screen, the screen not covered in the message darkening and gaining a red hue.
[Yes] or [No]
Two options she had by now become familiar with popped up underneath the notice, glancing at the thing in her shadow staring at her with monster puppy dog eyes, she fought back against them for a good minute, before she gave a defeated groan and clicked yes.
"Damn demonic thing, shouldn't be allowed puppy dog eyes." She complained as the thing stepped out of her shadow, the black shapeless shadow falling off like water from a ducks back as it stood before her and gave a purr.
"You're pretending to be a dog, dogs don't purr, they bark." She informed it with a dry smile, it blinked at her.
"Bark."
Hayleen facepalmed.
"I'm calling you Miasma, we clear?" She asked and watched as the bony weapon it called a tail wagged back and forth.
For a moment, the girl just stared, contemplating her decisions in life.
How did she get into this mess?
If she ever found that asshole from the party again, she was punching his face in.
With an iron bat.
Deep breaths.
One, two, one two.
"What did I get myself into? I don't know, but there's no way out!" She said with fake cheer before she let her head hang as her phone "Ding"-ed in her hand yet again.
[Resentment Hound (Soul) was renamed "Miasma"]
It informed her, "Oh, now that's useful and creepy at the same time." She commented as she gave the mangled bodies another look, they didn't seem to have anything useful on them and she was not yet desperate enough to further touch those things now recoloring the white tiled floor.
She turned and left, planning to go into room 278 and see what secret it bore but Miasma stayed, staring at the corpses.
"Is there something you want from them?" She asked, getting a bark in response, she raised an eyebrow, wondering what the beast could want, did it feast on dead flesh?
Miasma strolled over to the corpses and bit into their shadow, the gloom from around the corpses fading into the beast, earning a small, satisfied, burp from Miasma as a small white ball of light rose from them.
[Item: Resentment Hound]
[A Resentment Hound is a creature born from leftover grudges and hatred from other beings that choose to discard their resentment in order to pass on, as such, abandoned by their very creator they hate and despise everything and everyone, delighting in causing pain, suffering and death wherever they can.]
[Item is bound to "Hayleen Simmers"]
"Well isn't that just delightful." Hayleen looked at the beast now sitting a her feet and the description of the item on her phone while thinking that something didn't add up.
The monster dog seemed to be about as harmless as a puppy with how it looked at her, head tilted, eyes wide and expectant, not at all angry or bloodthirsty like the description lead her to believe.
Was it because it was bound to her, whatever that meant, or was the System wrong? Again?
Whatever the reason may be, she was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she patted her thigh twice in a call to it as she turned to leave the bathroom.
The monster lightly bit her shirt and gave a soft whine while looking at the two floating lights with large sad eyes.
"Yes, yes I'm sure you did a great job at whatever it was you did, now come on." She chided softly, tugging at her shirt, Miasma gave another louder whine and while she, he- it, let go it sat down on the floor, ears dropping, and looked at her.
"What do you want from me you hellspawn?" She asked and only got another begging look at the floating lights.
Intrigued, she gave the lights another thought, Miasma had eaten the black thing that came out from the shadows but left the white lights, was there something more to them?
This time her phone and the nameless app didn't give her the information she sought.
The description of another item popped into her head as she looked at the floating ball of light.
________
Soul Lamp,
The Soul Lamp can lead restless souls, ghosts, and specters into the afterlife while absorbing their remnants, strengthening itself and its owner in the process.
________
She tapped on the small lantern icon and watched as it popped into existence, this time already expecting the sudden appearance from the item, she was able to catch the lantern with barely a move from her hand.
The white iron handle clanked as it hit the hinges it was attached to, producing an eery click, click as it did so.
The lantern was a piece of art, she thought as she watched the green, blue flame dance behind the glass casing. The light from within the handheld lantern spilled out and gave the eery room a blue and green sheen.
Miasma looked at the lamp in her hand and gave a purr, stalking over to her and brushing past her legs as a sign of affection from the beast as it nudged its head against the lanter.
Hayleen opened the latch keeping the glass panel closed and watched as the small white lights disappeared into the burning flames, Hayleen could have sworn she heard a soft thank you from one of them as the white lights merged with the eery flames burning in her lanter.
Feeling speechless, she shook her head and turned back to the beast at her feet, "Happy now?" she asked, getting a happy purr as an answer as the beast stalked outside the bloody bathroom, it stopped in the doorway, turning its head is if waiting for her, the teen gave a sigh as she walked forward and out of the now empty doorway.
___________
The other beast, Estella, had entered a staring contest with Miama as she left the bathroom and stepped into the main room again, she, the itty-bitty human, had interrupted them and got two sharp glances in return, before they turned back to staring at each other.
Hayleen got over her fear of Estella quickly, seeing as it was of no threat to her, and waited.
At first, Hayleen watched, for about five minutes, before her already strained patience wore thin and she let the key cord in her hand dangle and clink as she held it out.
"If you two are done there, I'm leaving." She stated as she turned to leave, wanting to end this long day and get some good sleep.
With confidence she didn't know she still had, she walked out of the death trap in the form of a hospital room, her head held high, because against stacked odds, she survived, even if it was mostly her dogshit luck acting up again.
She walked to door 278, stopping before it as she heard the sound of claws hitting the ground in a fast rhythm, her... beast... companion? Yes Companion, trying to catch up, she peered over her shoulder to see the black mass of a dog stop behind her, Estella nowhere to be seen.
Hayleen gave a small sigh of relief, "C'mon Buddy, let's do this, I'm sick of this time loop."
Miasma gave a bark and stared at the door, giving her dog a smile she unlocked the door with the blood stained key and let the door fall open.
Unlike what she expected, the room looked clean and unused, surprised by the lack of gore or flesh tearing monsters, Hayleen began to snoop around the room.
There should be a reason that the room was locked, or maybe it was nothing?
With a shrug, Hayleen planned to abandon the empty room and return to the source of the time loop.
"Miasma, c'mon, we're leaving." The teen called to the sniffing dog.
Miasmas ears perked up and the dog was at her heel soon after, waiting for her next move, endeared to the dog like creature, the girl gave it a scratch behind the ears, Miasma closed her eyes in bliss, wagging her tail, Hayleen could only smile, thinking that she could get used to such a good girl as her companion.
She left the room and closed the door, retrieving the key and throwing it in her inventory with nary a thought, she'd keep the thing if only to reassure herself that this wasn't a hallucination.
The girl walked along the empty halls with purposeful steps and stopped before door 277, she took a breath and opened the closed door, halfway expecting the room to have changed or something to jump at her, but nothing happened.
She stepped into the bloodsoaked room and peered into the open bathroom, there was nothing in it other than a bloody mess and she wondered if all the beasts and monsters in the sector of the hospital had just chosen to all wander to room 272.
In Hayleens mind, the picture of the torn apart carcasses of the monster appeared.
"We all know how that ended." She mused as she walked around in the room, once again hoping to find something that cleared the mystery of the haunted hospital, in fact, unlike the room before this, she actually found something, it was hidden in the mattress and she only saw it because the too white pages were peeking out from within, piquing her interest and attention.
She held the pages in her hand, some a bit more torn than they were before as they got caught on the springs in the abused piece of furniture.
In bold black letters stood a headline proudly proclaiming.
"Project 3021: Enhanced Prothesises."
"Case 24"
Once again, there was far too much medical jargon for her to understand anything but the gists of it, and what she did understand made her stomach turn.
They were experimenting on desperate patients such as Estella, providing what they called "Clinical trial prosthesis" and other "Test treatments" to people down on their luck, in debt, or otherwise in no shape to refuse such miracle treatments.
They turned them and twisted them to make them into something they wanted, at times not even touching what the patient wanted help with in the first place.
Hayleen could only describe it as wanting a knife and being pushed into buying a new kitchen instead.
She gnashed her teeth in anger, if she were anyone else she would likely not be as angry as she was right now, but this hit too close to home, with how Olivia had always suffered from her steadily worsening migraines, she too had been offered "Experimental treatment" more often than she could count on one hand, and seeing this, seeing what could have happened had Olivia agreed, made her want to hurl and kill someone at the same time.
Preferable those bastards that took advantage of desperate people for their own gain.
She collected all the papers she could find, even if she understood absolutely nothing from them and piled them up, carefully storing them in her inventory.
The ax in her hand burned, she wanted to destroy something, Miasma nudged her side with her snout and she let go of her death grip, stroking Miasma on her soft head.
She took deep breaths, in and out, before she collected her composure and left the room.
Wondering what to do next, she decided to try the formerly locked doors before trying to break down another door.
The opened with a squeak and Hayleen let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
She stepped into the bright light and felt her phone thrum in her pocket, she ignored it and looked at her now empty hands, her clothes were now a bit stained from blood, but she had different things to worry about now.
After far too long, with Miasma back in her shadow, she finally stepped into her friends hospital room, smiling at the now awake Olivia.
"Yo, sleep well, Liv?"