Escaping the Mystery Hotel

『Translator: RainTL』

༺ Party Time (7), Secrets of Room 103 (2) ༻

– Han Kain

Room 103.

Even when I think back to it now, I could only say that it was a room full of harsh and merciless conditions. What exactly were the secrets of Room 103?

After perhaps noticing that my eyes were on her, Songee turned towards me for a question.

“Oppa? Do you have something to ask me?”

“No. I was just thinking back to how you pulled off such an amazing job in Room 103.”

“Ahaha. What’s this all of a sudden?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t Room 103 very strange? Everyone starts off imprisoned inside the farm of an alien monster, under the illusion that we had become animals. Besides, it’s set on a spaceship flying through space.

How were we even supposed to escape that? Was your method of befriending an Athanasia and the Devouring One with your ‘Affinity’ the only solution?”

“That shouldn’t be, though. I’m sure not all groups inside the Hotel had someone possessing ‘Affinity’.”

“Then what other solutions are there?”

Songee turned to the sky in deep contemplation.

“From my experience, I think there were a few gaps,” she added.

That was when Eunsol-noona joined our conversation with a question.

“In that case, Songee, can you tell us everything you felt about Room 103?”

“Aht! We don’t have to…”

“I’m not saying that to put you on a pedestal. Until now, the only rooms we have cleared are Rooms 101 and 103, and we all know what happened in Room 101 because we did it together.

But for Room 103, no-one really knows the details except for you, Songee. If we do a thorough analysis of the rooms we have cleared thus far, we might get some clues into the rooms we haven’t solved yet.”

“…I would need to organize everything that happened before I can explain them to you. Please give me some time.”

“Sure.”

Room 103, which none of us had seen the true form of except for Songee. I was curious – as the one who solved it by herself, what was her opinion on the escape method, the ‘gaps’ and vulnerable points of Room 103?

She needed quite some time to organize her line of thought. It took quite a while until she thoroughly ‘lectured’ us on what happened.

On the second afternoon of Party Time, we were exhausted after visiting Safari so took a rest after dinner.

Next morning on the third day, I ran away from Grandpa Mooksung who was chasing after me all morning, but in the end, I had to go to the Park with him, and run with the excuse of it being an ‘exploration’.

It was only around noon of that same day that Songee started her ‘Room 103 Lecture’.

*

“The reason I’m explaining Room 103 today isn’t to brag about it. It’s so that we can all understand the ‘Structure of a Cursed Room’ by revisiting Room 103, which you haven’t had the chance to really experience.

Firstly, I will explain the structure that makes sense the most in my opinion, and go through the vulnerable areas of both Room 101 and Room 103.

Lastly, I will talk about my ideas for how we could have escaped Room 103.

If you find it difficult in the middle, or have different ideas, please feel free to share them.”

Songee somewhat sounded and looked like an actual teacher.

“Firstly, about the Structure of a Cursed Room.

Looking at everything we have gathered thus far, we can come up with a structure like this.”

Saying that, she showed us what she had written down in her notebook.

1. Team of Participants

2. Enemy

3. Convict

“Of course, there are a lot of NPCs that do not fit into those categories, but they don’t have a proper role or any influence so we can say that there are only 3 groups that can affect the scenario.

First are the Participants. In other words, us.

Secondly are the beings that we have to fight against, which the Hotel refers to as the ‘Enemy’.

Thirdly, there is the ‘Convict’, who possesses divine powers but can only indirectly affect us due to the severe restrictions they are put under.

By the way, the term ‘Convict’, I heard from Grandpa, is what the Administration uses to call them.”

Grandpa Mooksung nodded from the side.

“From what we have confirmed until now, all the ‘Enemies’ inside each of the rooms had various schemes.

In Room 101, the Enemy was ‘Kim Sangmin’. Room 102 was probably ‘Sir’, the owner of the mansion; Room 103 was ‘Athanasia’; and Room 104 was probably the ‘Guider’.

As for the Convicts, they are deeply intertwined with the origin of the Curse, but I don’t think we need to deal with them. In fact, they’re beings that we can’t even do anything to.”

Eunsol-noona raised her opinion.

“Looking at them like this, the difficulty in Room 103 makes absolutely no sense. Of course, the Guider in Room 104 was quite incredible, but at least she was just one person.

Was every single Athanasia in Room 103 an Enemy? They all sound unbelievably powerful by themselves already.”

Songee continued her explanation.

“That’s what I would like to explain next. The ‘weakness’ of each Cursed Room. All the Cursed Rooms are heavily unfavorable for us, to the point that it is impossible to solve them without knowing much about each of the rooms.

However, each room has a certain ‘weakness’ that we can exploit, and are easier to solve when we do.

The same is for Room 103, but let’s talk about Room 101 first because we know more about them. What do you think was the weakness of Room 101?”

Taking the time to think about it allowed me to come up with one.

“That the Enemy, Kim Sangmin, was weaker than expected?”

“Exactly,” Songee replied. “Even though he did make a giant, it was only a little strong. Kim Sangmin himself was just a piece of flesh, and couldn’t even move.

The process of going through the family, the TV Station, the hospital and the hospital room to find him was the difficult part, but the Enemy himself was very easy to kill. I think that was the weakness of Room 101.”

The weakness of Room 101, was that the Enemy was weak and immobile.

Grandpa Mooksung gave a nod before asking a question.

“I can understand Room 101, but I still have no clues about Room 103. Each and every one of the Athanasias were powerful and there were a huge number of them on top of that, were there not?”

“There is one crucial difference between Room 103 and the other rooms. And that was the weakness.”

A crucial difference that only Room 103 possessed?

“Out of all the rooms that we have been to, Room 103 was the only room where the Convict was hostile to the Enemy.

Room 101: although we haven’t seen the Convict of Room 101, I don’t think he was hostile to ‘Kim Sangmin’, at the very least.

For Room 102, the Convict is most likely the demon of the basement. The owner of the mansion received his powers from the demon and tried to release it. They work in collaboration.

The Convict of Room 104 was the ‘lord’. The ‘Guider’ served the ‘lord’ as their god. They were in collaboration.

On the other hand, the Convict of Room 103, the ‘Devouring One’ had been locked by the Enemies, the Athanasias, through inexplicable facilities and had his energy absorbed for an eternity.

When I released the Devouring One, the first thing he did was annihilate all the Athanasia. They were hostile to each other.”

The only room where the Convict hated the Enemy.

That was the weakness of Room 103.

“You might be thinking that the Devouring One stood on my side because of my ‘Affinity’, and that I managed to solve it through that connection.

However, do you think a ‘Convict’, who has godly powers, would be swept away by my blessing that much?

I think anyone could have gained his active cooperation as long as we managed to contact the ‘Devouring One’.

My blessing might have made the Devouring One slightly more friendly, but he would have helped the Participants even without my blessing, because he had endless hatred to the Athanasias.”

I finally started to understand a little bit about Room 103. From the very beginning, the Convict of Room 103 wasn’t one of our enemies but a ‘helper’.

Realizing that was the most crucial element of resolving Room 103.

However, that alone wasn’t enough to explain everything. I had a few remaining questions so I asked them.

“I understand that the Devouring One would have helped us as long as we could come into contact with him. However, how would we even reach him in the first place?

You were able to, by befriending an Athanasia with ‘Affinity’, but we wouldn’t have been able to befriend or kill them ourselves.”

“That’s the preconception that you have to get out of,” Songee replied. “Our job in Room 103 wasn’t to fight against the Athanasias. With that outlook, it is impossible to solve it.

Each of the Athanasias are like demi-gods to us humans.

The number of Athanasias I managed to kill while escaping Room 103 was only one, and that was possible only because the Devouring One stopped them.

It’s the Devouring One’s job to wipe out the Athanasias. Our job, on the other hand, was just to persevere until the Devouring One recovered.”

Our job to escape Room 103 – Songee was saying that it was to simply ‘wait out until the Devouring One could recover’.

“After about 2 weeks? Or 3 weeks of entering the room – I don’t remember the exact time – the Devouring One gains enough power to attempt an escape.

He could send out a shockwave throughout the spaceship and stop the Athanasias momentarily. Our job was to last until that moment.

As long as we did, the Devouring One would have done something himself. He could have reached out to us himself, or destroyed the spaceship without caring about us.”

Grandpa Mooksung nodded and said.

“The part that we shouldn’t think about fighting the Athanasias makes sense. However, is it possible to last 2 to 3 weeks with our soul and intellect being sucked out?”

“Absorbing our intellect was what the necklace around our necks did, and not the Bracelet,” replied Songee. “It might not have been visible but it did exist, and besides, it’s extremely fragile so breaking that was probably what we needed to do first of all.”

“What if the Athanasia intervened and put another necklace on us if we broke them?”

“Even when I broke mine, they didn’t immediately put another one on my neck. We can’t tell for sure at this point, but I can come up with a few ideas.

It might be that they can’t tell if one specific necklace is malfunctioning or not. Or, it could be that they have to restart the entire farm to put on another necklace.

From what I have observed, they were only putting on necklaces when the Animal Farms weren’t in motion. Maybe restarting the farm just because a small percentage of the ‘livestock’ wasn’t being productive wouldn’t have made sense for them.

The method to escape, I believe, would have been to break our necklace to stop our intellects from being absorbed.”

Finding that puzzling, Seungyub raised a question.

“How is that an escape? We haven’t left the spaceship and we are still stuck in the farm as animals, aren’t we?”

“Think about the escapes in the other rooms. For example in Room 101, it was considered an escape just by distancing ourselves from the family, right?

For Room 102, messing with Sir’s ritual was all we needed to do to escape, and being chased out of the school in Room 104 was enough to be considered an escape.

But when you think about it, the threats within those worlds are still there.

In Room 101, even if you did distance yourself from your family, the world was still doomed; and even when we interfere with Sir’s ritual in Room 102, he could invite more civilians to eventually summon the demon.

In Room 104, the school would run just without a problem even if we were outside of it.

There is no need to solve the threats within those worlds to ‘escape’ it. Escaping from the initial threat to our life was all that we needed to do.

I think it would have been the same for Room 103. As Seungyub said, breaking the necklace doesn’t change the fact that we are still animals stuck in place, but we would have escaped the looming threat of our intellects being sucked out.”

It was starting to make sense. In the first place, the Hotel differentiated escape from solutions and Songee’s ideas sounded like a valid take on it.

Unlike the ‘resolutions’, you did not have to resolve the fundamental curse of that world for an ‘escape’. Escaping the current, looming threat was all that needed to be done.

Thinking back to Room 101, physically distancing yourself from your family didn’t mean anything, did it? The world was already doomed, and yet simply running away from your family was accepted as an escape method.

The same could be said for Room 103. Breaking the necklace to avoid the imminent threat of having our souls sucked dry and delaying our death by a few months might have been enough for an escape.

“Lastly as a ‘what if’, let me talk about the ‘normal progression’ that we would have had if not for my ‘Affinity’.

None of us would have known anything at the start. We would have tried to live as animals, and one of our necklaces would have broken ‘by accident’, like it did to me.

That person would live on even after everyone else died, survive for a few more weeks and witness the Devouring One trying to overturn the entire spaceship. During that process, the illusion would have been removed, and they would have noticed the true identity of Animal Farm.

The Devouring One would have failed without our assistance, but that would have been considered an ‘Escape’.

After leaving the room, we would go for a second try while this time being aware of the existence of the ‘Devouring One’. In our next attempts, we would try whatever we could to come into contact with the ‘Devouring One’, who was hostile to the Athanasias.

And this would have determined whether we ‘escaped’ or ‘resolved’ the room.

Breaking the necklace to survive as long as we could is an ‘escape’, whereas contacting the Devouring One somehow to help release him would lead to a ‘resolution’.”

Only after listening to the lecture throughout all of lunch did I finally have a rough idea about the structures of Room 103.

“In the end, doesn’t that mean we all die if the first necklace doesn’t break ‘by accident’?”

“Yes, but that’s the same for Room 101 right? If Seungyub didn’t avoid his family by playing League ‘by coincidence’, we would have all died anyway.”

Ahri, who had been silent the whole time, finally raised her voice.

“I think there would have been another method to escape, even without the necklace breaking by accident.”

“Of course there could have been,” Songee replied. “These are just my thoughts.”

“For example, maybe there was a way for us to be chosen as the ‘family of farmers’ inside the farm? Unlike normal livestock, they would live longer as the ones managing the farm, so they wouldn’t have died immediately.”

“Makes sense, but I’m not sure about the details on that end.”

That marked the end of our ‘revision’ on Room 103. After that long discussion, I wrote a four-line summary of it on paper.

*

Start -> Break necklace to stop losing intellect; make sure we can live for longer.

Escape -> Survive for 2 ~ 3 weeks. And witness the Devouring One’s attempted rebellion.

Resolution -> After being aware of the Devouring One, receive his assistance to massacre the Athanasias.

& Maybe there’s a method to be the family of farmers?

*

Writing them down reminded me once again of why most of the participants would fail at the Hotel.

You had to be both smart and strong but…

Fundamentally, you had to be lucky, or you could be wiped out before you can even do anything!

We were nearing the end of Party Time.

It was now about time for us to start discussing the next room.

***

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