Escaping the Mystery Hotel

Party Time Second Night

- Han Kain

Right as Ahri was about to reveal her secrets, all the lights around the Hotel suddenly started to flicker as screams filled the corridor.

Ahri, similarly baffled, stopped in the middle of her talk and looked at me in confusion.

“I don’t know what’s happening but let’s move!” I suggested.

I was turning around when she suddenly yelled out.

“Dodge!”

— Swoosh!

Who the hell is this guy?

Standing there was a giant reaching 2 meters in height, wearing boxing gloves in his hands. He had quite the strange appearance – he was drooling and talking gibberish.

“Kids these days don’t have the perseverance. What’s wrong with losing an arm or a leg? Learn boxing. Learn it from me!”

Ahri was about to do something, but she didn’t even need to.

I immediately took control of his body.

***

Something was odd.

There was not a single “memory” in his head.

The only thing in his brain was the phrase he just uttered about kids these days.

Is this even human?

In any case, I broke his legs and returned to my body.

“Did you just take over his body and break his legs?”

“Yeah. But who is this guy?”

“Not sure. First, let’s group up with everyone else.”

We headed back to Room 105 and found Eunsol-noona running out of the room in a hurry while putting a cardigan over her shoulders.

“Are you guys okay!” she asked.

“We’re fine. Where’s everyone else?”

“Let’s go to the basement. They said they wanted to play in the basement.”

The three of us headed to the basement and found Elena, Songee, Mooksung, and Jinchul, and around them were 10 or so of the crazy boxers that I fought lying on the ground.

“Are you guys alright?” I asked.

To be honest, though, I wasn’t too concerned about their wellbeing because boxers that were just a little bit stronger than normal people, who couldn’t even think properly on top of that, were no match for us.

“Of course we are. But where are these guys coming from? They keep coming out as if they’re appearing from thin air.”

Unlike me, everyone else had already seen what was happening through the display screen.

“A surprise event due to a request from a participant? Nightmare? Who even made the request?”

Grandpa Mooksung seemed puzzled as well.

“That’s what I’m saying! I have no idea who would have made that request.”

That was when Eunsol-noona suddenly lowered her head and opened her mouth.

“I think… it was me.”

The following explanation she gave was quite shocking. She simply asked “Hand of Greed” for a useful weapon and it turned out like this.

Surprisingly, it was Jinchul-hyung who remained the most positive.

“Noonim. Don’t worry about it. These guys are all small fries, and it will be a big win for us if we get a good weapon in return for killing a few of these guys. Don’t blame yourself.”

“R, right?”

“Unni. It’s okay!”

“That’s fine, but where is Seungyub right now?”

“Huh? Wait!”

“Kain! Check where Seungyub is with your Location information!”

***

“Kain?”

The surroundings were bustling with noise but my mind was preoccupied by the screen in front of me. The “Scenario Comprehension” button was flickering in the system window.

Can I use it outside the Cursed Room?

It seemed that I could use it even inside the Hotel whenever there were strange events like this.

The moment I clicked on it, a passage of text immediately filled my sight.

Scenario: Hotel Event - Nightmare

On a peaceful night of joy and relief at the Hotel, a boy pained by unrequited love climbs the mountain alone to build his courage, and comes across a mysterious butterfly…

Please check the next scenario at ‘Hiking’ in the basement of the Hotel.

I was blankly digesting the words when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘huh?’ I thought something happened to you, Kain. Does it say something on your system window?”

“Ah, right. The Scenario Comprehension is activated now.”

I told everyone what I saw.

“By ‘boy’, are they talking about Seungyub? Climbing a mountain alone to build courage? I have no clue what this means, but let’s go to the Hiking room right now!”

Despite the confusion, we started heading to the “Hiking” room located in the basement. On the way there, I realized that Ahri’s face had turned pale after listening to my explanation.

Before I could say anything, Songee asked her after seemingly having sensed the same thing.

“Ahri. Do you know what that means?”

“...Seungyub was being clingy yesterday so I said something as a joke.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I don’t like kids that are timid and faint-hearted~’...”

Grandpa Mooksung was in awe after hearing that.

“Kyah! So you’re saying he went climbing in the middle of the night just to build his courage?”

“...”

“Let’s just quickly go to the mountain. Once we go inside the room, Kain should be able to tell us more with his ‘Scenario Comprehension’.”

***

Together we headed to the “Hiking Room”.

Because it was nighttime at the Hotel, the inside of the “Hiking Room” was also similarly pitch black.

Jinchul-hyung switched on the flashlight, and I turned to the scenario once again.

Scenario: Hotel Event - Nightmare

The mysterious butterfly was none other than the ‘Nightmare Butterfly’.

Upon coming across the butterfly, the boy had to face the nightmare hidden deep inside his heart and in the end entered the deep abyss of his trauma.

Before long, his nightmare began to spread across the world.

In that precarious situation, the teammates of the young boy arrive at the mountain to save him.

Please check the next scenario in the middle of the mountain.

“We have to climb to the middle of the mountain!”

“Why do we have to do this in the middle of the night?”

Although everything was hard to follow, I was in a pretty good mood. Only now was I finally starting to understand what kind of ability “Scenario Comprehension” was.

It was an ability that notified us of who the threat was in a Cursed Room, while also guiding us down the correct path to solve the problem. Without this, we would have wasted a lot of time wandering around the basement, not knowing who the enemy was or where we were supposed to go!

If we had this from the start, rooms like the Common Sense Renovating Media would have been extremely easy.

Now it made sense why the owl would have proudly called it a “powerful empowerment”.

As soon as we started climbing the mountain, we were met with tedious obstacles. Monsters emerged out of the darkness and pounced at us, which we had to fight against in a formation.

Kim Mooksung, Cha Jincul, Kim Ahri, Yu Songee, and me. The five of us who could fight were at the front, attacking monsters with each of our abilities, while Elena and Eunsol-noona had to remain inside the formation.

This reminded me of how strong we had really become in such a short span of time.

Each of those monsters looked like horrendous beasts that would come out in horror movies, but I didn’t feel any sense of danger.

Jinchul-hyung was smashing through the monsters like a wolf in a flock of sheep, while Songee simply flicked her fingers a few times to make magic happen.

Meanwhile, I stole the body of a big snake to wreak havoc in the enemy ranks, and Ahri and Grandpa Mooksung were also doing a great job.

Aren’t we nearly at the level of superhuman heroes at this point?

But still, there was no end to the monsters.

Each and every one of them were small fries that served no threat to us, but they kept on coming out without an end.

Worried that I might end up wasting the time limit of “Possession” at a place like this, I returned to my body.

Now, there were around 20 minutes left of Possession that I could use.

It would be filled back up the next day, but there were still 2 hours to go until the third day of Party Time.

The conversation tab opened on the side.

Kim Mooksung: Attention! This doesn’t look right. There’s no end.

Kim Ahri: The Scenario is called Nightmare. It said the nightmare of the boy had spread to the world. The monsters here must be from Seungyub’s nightmare.

Lee Eunsol: Then do we have to find him and wake him up?

Cha Jinchul: I will use the Star and open up a path.

Jinchul-hyung took out the star and dashed forth while we waited for a moment and took a rest.

Exhausted, Songee sat down on the ground when Perro sat on her shoulder and started rubbing its beak on her cheeks.

That was quite cute.

“There are monsters everywhere; is Perro alright? I was worried it might turn into a monster as well.”

“Perro is very smart so it’s okay!”

“What do you mean?”

“Perro can instinctively sense how strong everyone is. In Perro’s eyes, the monsters here are nothing compared to us, and that’s why he’s not afraid.”

That made sense. The two times when Perro was scared were when he was alone, and when he was hit by Jinchul-hyung.

It was obvious that he would be scared if the latter happened, so the only thing we had to worry about was the former.

I wanted to pat it as well so I walked towards Songee.

— Quaaaak!

Perro suddenly screamed out loud before hiding in Songee’s clothes.

“Aht! Oppa, can you stay there please!”

“...”

Why did he hate me so much?

…Actually, there were way too many reasons.

On the first day of Party Time, after Eunsol-noona came up with the idea of using a parachute to escape, I came up with an idea – it was that I could possess Perro’s body and fly outside the Hotel to see how it was.

Ever since that idea, I possessed Perro around 3 times to practice flying. All I learned from that, was that it was hard to fly even with wings, as a human who had never flown in his life.

It cost Perro several feathers until I came to terms with it.

After that, Perro began to scream and run away every time he saw me.

I was standing there awkwardly when Ahri tapped me on the shoulder.

“Give it a break. It’s a precious animal that hatched from the golden egg, but it’s about to be bald because of you.”

We stayed there for around 2 to 3 minutes after Jinchul-hyung dashed up with the star in hand, before setting off.

Thanks to Jinchul-hyung pulling in the monsters and destroying them with the star, we climbed up the mountain uninterrupted, although we did have to see the distorted, grotesque bodies of the monsters.

After arriving at the middle of the mountain, I turned back again to the system window.

Scenario: Hotel Event - Nightmare

The teammates found the boy locked in his eternal nightmare, approaching death with every moment! Can they save the boy and defeat the Nightmare Butterfly?

We “found” him?

Jinchul-hyung must have found him already.

This felt like the last section of the scenario. It no longer told us where to go, and even disclosed what we had to do.

Wake Seungyub up and defeat the Nightmare Butterfly.

Turning around, I followed everyone else to where Jinchul-hyung had carefully laid Seungyub on the ground after wrapping him with clothes.

“Is he okay?” I asked, “Scenario Comprehension is saying he is approaching death right now.”

“Come have a look. He does look like he’s struggling.”

Taking a closer look, I couldn’t help but grasp.

Seungyub had never been a chubby person and was overall a very thin boy, but right now, he looked like a boy suffering from starvation like the ones that appeared in documentaries.

He was all bones.

We were all shocked speechless, but there were two in our group that were able to stay calm.

“I know what this is,” said Grandpa Mooksung. “Looks like the Hotel calls this the Nightmare Butterfly.”

“Do you know about this monster?” I asked back.

“We have them on Earth as well. At the Administration, we call them ‘Dream Eaters’, and they’re either identical or similar at the very least. They’re quite common in the West, particularly around Europe.”

…We have these on Earth? Besides, they’re common in Europe?

What kind of place have I been living in this whole time?

In any case, that wasn’t the important part. The fact that they knew what it was, would also mean they knew how to deal with it.

Grandpa Mooksung glanced at Ahri, who pondered to herself for a moment, before walking towards me.

“Drink.”

“Do I have to drink your blood again? What do I—”

“We’re short on time so I’ll explain when we’re ‘inside’. Drink it.”

I drank her blood.

…My consciousness immediately distanced itself and my body fell to the ground.

***

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