A deafening roar and screams erupted from the room—like the slaughter of a pig. Utterly chilling.

"Should we go down?"

"No! The mental hospital director downstairs has turned into a Malevolent Ghost too! Going down is suicide!"

"But isn't it better than facing those two?"

Glasses Girl and Poker Face’s specters argued fiercely, unaware the director’s ghost had already been dragged away.

"Ahhh… Dad… Why… why… Ahhh…"

Just as they bickered, a blinding white light shot from the ward behind us, tearing through the darkness and flooding the space.

"Ah! My eyes!"

The sudden glare stung Glasses Girl and the others blind; it took them a while to recover.

"Is that guy glowing?"

Poker Face spoke first. We turned—and the light source was the mentally ill Malevolent Ghost himself! A faint luminescence pulsed from his pale body.

"Did he… ascend?"

"More like evolve. Why? From the beating?"

Normally, Patient Four was a relatively calm Malevolent Ghost with little killing power—until light triggered his frenzy.

Dr Chen recalled the file: after school one day, the boy hid in a cabinet post-beating by his father. He stayed there a full day and night. Later, his drunken father smashed the cabinet and dragged him from darkness into light.

In that moment, his long-tormented mind shattered.

He grabbed a knife, stabbed wildly, killed his father, dismembered him, then blocked every window—plunging the room back into darkness.

Only then did he feel safe again.

A week later, neighbors broke in after smelling rot. The sudden light sent him into a rage; he stabbed several paramedics. Weak from malnutrition, he was subdued.

During transport and interrogation, he ranted uncontrollably, needing constant sedation until placed in this hospital’s custom-built dark ward.

In darkness, he became the obedient boy again—confessing everything, begging to stay locked away forever, terrified of hurting others.

"He knew he couldn’t beat Crimson Robe normally, so he made himself glow to trigger frenzy. Holy crap, that actually works!"

True to Dr Chen’s words, bloodied Patient Four pushed up with arms like dry twigs, rising slowly beneath the lash of countless black hair strands.

"ROOOOAAAR——!"

All the rage from his father’s abuse erupted. The roar shook the entire building.

Every spirit in the hospital once killed by Patient Four’s ghost now trembled in hiding, too terrified to emerge.

"Damn it, he’s up! I’m outta here!" Poker Face, clinging to Dr Chen, leaped down the stairs without hesitation. Facing the director felt safer than these two monsters.

"What are you staring for? Run!" Glasses Girl, who’d planned to stick with Dr Chen, saw him frozen like an idiot. Assuming fear paralyzed him, she bolted—leaving him alone.

"Please… nothing bad happens…"

Dr Chen’s anxiety spiked. Patient Four was unlike any Malevolent Ghost they’d faced—far stronger. Others would’ve been sliced to ribbons by those hairs; on him, they left only deep, bone-deep gashes.

And that was *calm* state. What about frenzied? Could Crimson Robe… actually lose to him?

Even with her age advantage, Crimson Robe was once just a young woman. How could her cruelty match a mentally shattered patient in berserk rage?

Crimson Robe slowly retracted her dancing hair strands. Just as Dr Chen, fearing she was losing, hurled the electrotherapy device to aid her—

—the shadow beneath her feet stretched mysteriously, reaching Patient Four’s feet in a blink.

His furious expression froze. Then, like sinking into a swamp, his body was slowly consumed by the darkness… and vanished.

"O-One-hit KO?"

Before Dr Chen could process the shock, the stray electrotherapy coil—ghost-seeking function still active—curved through the air in a heartbreakingly perfect arc… and landed squarely on Crimson Robe’s head.

......