Escaping the Mystery Hotel

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 1

Current Location: Floor 1, Corridor

Sage’s Advice: 1]

Lastly, after walking from the front desk in the opposite direction of the main entrance for 10 minutes, we came across the elevator. 

“Ah, this feels a little spooky. The elevator is broken according to the notification. Hopefully some ridiculous monster wouldn’t pop out because of that.”

“You do have a point. Kain, you’ve been pretty sharp after all. Let’s all pause for a bit – let me grab something,” said Jinchul-ssi.

Everyone knew this man was in charge of 90% of the crew’s strength so no-one stopped him from grabbing a weapon. Shortly after that, he came back with… something amazing.

“Ehk? Hyung, what is that? A spear? Where did you get that from?” asked Seungyub, the youngest boy of our group.

“Yeah. I saw it on the way just then; there was this decorational pole used as a flag. Remove the flag and that’s a polearm.”

Seeing him swing that around, I asked him a question.

“Umm… Jinchul-ssi. Isn’t that heavy? It looks heavier than 10 kilograms for sure.”

“What’s with that ‘ssi’. Don’t bother calling me like that, Kain. You can just call me ‘hyung’. And like I said during lunch, before I wasn’t strong enough to swing something like this around easily, but now I get the feeling I can. It’s probably because of that Blessing of Courage. Superman would be an overstatement but… Around as strong as Captain America I guess?”

“Ah, then I will call you hyung. Anyway, it’s very reassuring. I’m sure most monsters would be stunned after getting hit by that.”

Captain America – it suited him very well but maybe it should be Captain Korea because he’s Korean? There was a small part of me that thought he might be more of a monster than those actual monsters.

The person in charge of our strength was even more reliable than before so we all confidently headed towards the elevator.

Click–

We opened the door of the elevator. Fortunately, there was no monster inside and it was unexpectedly quite clean. I immediately realised what it meant that a part of the functions were deactivated upon seeing the panel – the buttons for Floors 2 and 3 were off. Songee pressed them just in case but as expected, nothing happened.

“I guess we can’t go to the 2nd and the 3rd floors yet. Then should we try going to the basement?”

“Whatever it is, let’s just go there! Go wherever we can and see if there’s anything important. What could possibly go wrong with Captain America protecting us?”

Eunsol-noona who sounded a lot more confident shouted assuredly as Jinchul-hyung embarrassedly smiled from the side. As soon as Songee was about to press the button for the basement—

[Heading to the basement now is incredibly dangerous.]

Grip.

I ran up instinctively and grabbed Songee’s arm. It was so abrupt that everyone was flustered. They were all staring at me not knowing how they were supposed to react while Songee was trembling like a rabbit.

“I’m sorry. Just then, I got the alarm. The alarm of the ‘status screen’ that I mentioned during lunch.”

“You mean the one only you can see? The one that told you to go to Room 105?”

“Yes.”

“What did it say. I can somewhat make a guess but…”

“It says it’s incredibly dangerous to go to the basement now.”

“Hah, far out. Everything is dangerous in this damn hotel,” grumbled Jinchul-hyung.

“Then let’s do that. It told us about Room 105 so we should trust it. And Kain? I think you can let go of her arm now. A little bit more and Songee is going to faint.”

Hearing Eunsol-noona’s jest, I released my grip.

“Ah, sorry. I was a bit startled just then.”

“N, no. It’s okay…”

“Kain-hyung. How many of that ‘Sage’s Advice’ do you have left now?” Seungyub asked.

[Sage’s Advice: 0]

“0 apparently.”

“Zero? Ah, did it go down when telling you not to open the main entrance?”

After a short silence, Eunsol-noonim, who was like the leader of our group, opened her mouth.

“Then, let’s stop today’s exploration. I feel… going around in this dangerous place without Kain’s ‘alarms’ is too dangerous.”

“Would there be a way to refill these numbers?” 

Seungyub replied to my question.

“Hyung. Things like that usually get refilled after a sleep. It’s the standard rule for mana and HP to go back up to full after a sleep at the inn.”

Standard rule – it sounded like a gaming mindset but there was no way around it in the first place, and I also thought it sounded quite plausible.

Everyone agreed that exploring any further without Sage’s Advice would be too dangerous and we soon returned to the front of Room 105.

“Now, we will all separate automatically when we go in, right? And teleport back together for dinner?”

“I think so.”

“Then let’s all go in and rest a little. It will be mealtime again in about an hour. We can go in, take a small rest and a shower and that will do. We are done exploring for today… but I’m not really sure what else to do.” Jinchul-hyung said.

“I don’t think we need to worry about that.” It was Eunsol-noona who replied to him.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sure we all felt the same thing. No idea if it’s a monster, a human or a ghost, but this hotel is constantly trying to ‘manage’ us. We got the exact drinks we wanted and looking back, it was probably the same for food. My opinion is that this ‘thing’ that is trying to manage us wouldn’t watch us do nothing. It will say ‘Esteemed guests’ again and tell us to do this and that.”

“That makes sense. Plus there’s nothing else we can do either.”

“Yes. And… Just wanted to say this to everyone. Whether it be today or another day, there might be a time when you don’t feel like eating. Even if you don’t feel like eating, let’s still gather at the dining room and show our faces without doing something else. I think we should constantly verify each other’s survival in a strange place like this.”

Indeed, communication was very difficult in this place. The only safe place was Room 105 and there was no way to meet each other upon entering Room 105 apart from the three mealtimes. In the real world, you could simply send messages but our phones haven’t been functioning properly for a while already.

There was a need for us to meet periodically.

“Let me suggest something as well. There is no way to meet each other after entering Room 105 – our phones don’t work and we can’t see each other outside of mealtimes. But I think we should share information even outside of mealtimes, and confirm we are all alive like what noonim said. So, how about we come out of the room every hour until we go to sleep? For example today, the meal will be from 7 to 8:30, but aside from that, we can come out at 6 o’clock, 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock and 11 o’clock to see if there is anything wrong with any of us, or whether we should do anything.”

Unexpectedly, it was Songee and Elena who reacted first.

“I think that’s a great idea! Honestly, when I was alone in the morning before mealtime, it was really… really scary. It would be great to see each other even a little.”

“I agree as well. To be frank, rather than privacy or whatever in a strange place like this, it would have been great if they let us stay together. But since that’s not possible, let’s force ourselves to see each other frequently.”

Everyone agreed to the suggestion, and we soon established two principles.

Verify we are all alive even aside from mealtimes.

Gather in front of Room 105 every hour to see each other.

After coming up with those life principles, we all headed into our separate rooms through one entrance.

*

Like what it was like in the morning, welcoming me back was a ridiculously large and fancy bedroom which even an average rich kid wouldn’t be able to live in. Living alone in an outrageously fancy mansion like this with intriguingly delicious food – isn’t this paradise on earth?

I tried deceiving myself with those thoughts but it was in vain. There was no way there would be human-devouring monkeys in paradise.

What terrible things have I done to be forced into this mysterious prison…?

Confusion, fear, concern and a little bit of anticipation for the unknown. I was despondently thinking inside that turbulent tornado of emotions when I spotted something flashing on the status screen. 

Wasn’t Sage’s Advice already at 0? Thinking that, I had a look and noticed it wasn’t Sage’s Advice.

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 1

Current Location: Floor 1, Room 105 (Room of Rest)

Teammate Information (*)

Sage’s Advice: 0]

I stared at the flashing label while thinking, ‘Open!’ as I did before, and it immediately opened as a vast array of letters covered my sight. Seeing that, I realised it would be dangerous to look at this in a pressing situation.

But now that I thought about it, there was nothing flashing when I was exploring outside. It might be a feature that is only activated when at a safe location.

What appeared was a very brief profile of everyone.

[1. Han Kain (20) – Wisdom. Freshman at K University

2. Cha Jinchul (31) – Courage. Former professional boxer

3. Yu Songee (17) – Affinity. Raises numerous animals

4. Elena Ivanova (23) – Justice. Daughter of a diplomat seeking asylum. Currently wanting to be an actor.

5. Park Seungyub (14) – Fortune. An unstoppable juvenile boy

6. Lee Eunsol (32) – Wealth. 3rd child of the chairman of Daeyang Group]

Ah. This seemed to be an extension of the ‘feelings’ I got from seeing my teammates which was changed into ‘related facts’. I noticed what the Blessing of Wisdom did: it was changing the ambiguous data I had into certain facts, and giving out warning signs when in danger.

[You have understood a little bit about your Blessing!]

A notification came immediately afterwards and I realised my perception of it was correct. 

The information related to my teammates in general gave me the feeling, ‘That sounds plausible. But seriously?’

Jinchul-hyung who was being labelled with incredible titles like the terminator and Captain America, was in fact a former professional boxer.

Songee, who was a little flustered in the conversation before, liked animals a lot as expected, and Miss Elena wanting to be an actor made way too much sense. Even I would have had the same dream if I was born like that.

As for Seungyub, there was something obvious written down next to him. Aren’t boys that age all unstoppable? 

But Eunsol-noonim was quite a surprise. Daeyang Group was the prominently rich family that everyone in Korea knew about. The 3rd child of the chairman… She was astonishingly more rich than I had ever expected.

At the same time… my honest opinion was that it would have zero meaning in a situation like this. Whether you were rich or poor, how would that matter in a hotel with monsters? The most meaningful career would probably be the former boxer. Thinking that I should get closer to Jinchul-hyung, I blankly fell asleep.

Ah, I have to set an alarm…

Fortunately, the day came to an end without anything much happening apart from me being lectured a little for being slightly late to the meal.