Escaping the Mystery Hotel

『Translator: RainTL』

༺ Party Time (9), Strategy Meeting (2) Fin, Re-entering Room 102 – Mansion of Fear ༻

– Han Kain

In the end, I couldn’t ignore the eyes of other people and removed the lines on Grandpa’s face, and only then did everything become serious again.

There were two things to do before our re-entry into Room 102.

An analysis of the hints, and a discussion about the escape.

I started off.

“Firstly, let’s talk about the hint, ‘Don’t fall into the bias that you must go towards the _________.’ This clue tells us two things:

One, the ‘Don’t fall into bias’ part tells us that we had a bias about going to a specific place.

That was when Ahri suddenly brought up a different topic.

“Before we talk about the clues or the escape method, there is another problem that we have to consider.”

“Another problem?”

“The chance that the scenario itself might change. Room 102 is different from other rooms – our members are different compared to the first attempt, right?

During the first attempt, Grandpa and I were members of the mansion but we are members of the team now. This is something that is unique to this room.”

The scenario itself is changing… That certainly was a point we hadn’t considered before.

I thought they might just replace the NPCs with a different maid and a butler but… Ahri sounded very certain.

Did she experience it before?

“Have you experienced the scenario changing to a different one?” I asked.

Ahri stayed silent for a bit before answering my question.

“As you all know, the Hotel has the ‘Room of Resurrection’. During my first time in the Hotel, the team back then revived an NPC they met in a Cursed Room to bring them back to life.

I remember the Hotel changing the scenario altogether instead of replacing the role with a new NPC.

It wasn’t a completely different scenario; it was similar in the grand scheme of things, but it was set in a different time period.”

“A different time period?” asked Eunsol-noona.

“I think it was set in the future of the previous scenario. I’m not entirely sure.”

“Speaking of the Room of Resurrection, what happens to the NPC that you revive through that room? Do they become participants like us? Do they recover their Inheritance and the blessing they had prior to becoming an NPC?”

“Sorry. I can’t remember. It’s not like I’m trying to hide anything; but it was a really long time ago and I was very young back then.

My memories of my first attempt are very vague, and most of my memories are about my mom.”

That made sense. Ahri must have been a very young baby during her first time at the Hotel, unlike her suspicious self now.

More importantly, I shifted my line of thought to the possibility of a scenario change.

The scenario of a Cursed Room changing after reviving the NPC inside it huh… It was interesting, but how was it relevant to us?

“How is that relevant to what we are going through now? We don’t even know where the Room of Resurrection is.”

“That’s what I thought too at the start,” replied Ahri. “That’s why I haven’t said anything before but I found some crucial commonalities after thinking about them these past few days.”

What Ahri went through in the past with the revival of an NPC, and the agents becoming a member of our crew…

The commonality between them was that NPCs had become a member of the team.

“If you think about the core reason; why do you think the Hotel would change the scenario when an NPC is revived from the room? It’s because of ‘information’.

There are plenty of pieces of information that the group of participants are either oblivious to, or have to pay a huge price for, but those become way too easy to access when the NPC becomes a member of the group.”

That made sense.

Unlike our first attempt at Room 102, Ahri and Grandpa Mooksung were no longer ‘characters of the Mansion’, and were on our side. They knew a bunch of crucial things that the normal group of participants should otherwise be oblivious to.

An example of that was how one of the ways to escape was by ‘stopping Sir from offering 6 sacrifices’, which Ahri conveyed to me through the card game. There were probably a lot more that they knew.

In other words, from the standpoint of the Hotel, it could be said that we got unfair access to these important bits of information that should have been hard to gather, thanks to the NPCs becoming teammates.

And hence, the Hotel could change the scenario to ‘modify the difficulty’.

This was difficult. What were we supposed to do in preparation if the scenario itself was going to change?

“Does that mean the time period of the Cursed Room could either move forward or back in time?”

“We would have to leave both possibilities open. Ehew~. I guess we need to come up with totally different escape methods then,” said Eunsol-noona with a sigh.

That was when Grandpa Mooksung gave us slight hope.

“It’s difficult to say anything about the future, but we might get ourselves a helper if we go to the past.”

A helper?

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember about the cathedral and the mysterious bell? The cathedral had been there for even longer than the mansion, but more important than that is the bell. It was a divine item brought from outside.”

“From outside? Who was it from?”

This time, Ahri answered the question.

“When the ‘Sir’ of the Mansion started to go corrupt, a group of exorcists came from outside the village. I remember they were the ones that brought the bell.”

Exorcists?

“Wait, so why weren’t they able to punish or stop Sir? Was he too strong by then already?”

Grandpa Mooksung replied.

“According to what they shoved into my head, it seems that they couldn’t find any evidence.”

“Evidence of what?”

“The exorcists visited the village because of people going missing one after another. ‘Sir’, the owner of the mansion, was the prime suspect but they couldn’t find any evidence.”

Village? Was there something like a village nearby?

“Was there a village near the mansion?” I asked.

“The memories of the butler left inside me says that there was indeed a village. That’s why the cathedral was there.

However, after various mysterious and ominous incidents, many died and the rest ran away, leaving behind nothing but the mansion. The start of those ‘mysterious incidents’ was the people going missing.”

The past of the Mansion of Fear that we experienced, was quite straight-forward.

That was probably when ‘Sir’ started to go corrupt.

Ominous incidents happening around the village and the mansion; exorcists visiting the village to investigate the prime suspect but leaving without finding any evidence…

In the end, when Sir was left to his own devices, the village fell into a heavy decline with many dead, until it eventually became barren. That must have been the time period we were in when we first entered Room 102.

“If we do go to the past of the Mansion of Fear, I guess we would have to help the exorcists, right?”

“We probably do have to help the exorcists,” Eunsol-noona replied. “And make sure they find the evidence to punish Sir unlike what happened before.”

Jinchul-hyung, who had been silent the whole time, put an end to the conversation.

“Let’s stop this conversation here. Frankly speaking, we still don’t know if we will be going to the past or not.”

That was true.

After putting the ‘scenario change’ into one of our possibilities, it became really difficult to have a meaningful meeting.

There were infinite possibilities laid out in front of us – way too many for us to consider any of them in depth.

Eunsol-noona brought the topic back to what we had been talking about.

“As Jinchul said, let’s stop there for the discussion on changes to the scenario. Anything more would just be us wasting time imagining what it could be.

Let’s go back to what we were talking about with ‘escape’.

Firstly, we will put aside ‘suicides’, because following the change of the scenario, it is highly likely that the escape method through suicides will be blocked.

How about ‘leaving the mansion’?

If we wake up in the car to the mansion like last time, the rest can advance with the story while one person can drive the car out of the mansion for the ‘escape’.”

That sounded like a decent plan.

One thing that we figured out over time across several Cursed Rooms, was that escaping was relatively easy compared to the ‘Resolutions’ which were incomparably harder to grasp your head around. Avoiding the ‘current threat’ appeared to be enough for an escape.

Maybe leaving the mansion would also be considered an escape?

There were a few more conversations after that, but the main framework that we had decided on did not change until the end.

1. Because the NPCs of the Mansion were on our side, there is a chance that the time period of the scenario might be modified.

2. At the start, let one person drive the car out of the mansion for an escape.

That marked the end of the 4th day of the Party Time.

On the day after that, everyone did whatever they wanted to do for a good rest, and finalized the plan for the next room.

*

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 28

Current Location: Floor 1, Room 102 (Cursed Room – Mansion of Fear)

Sage’s Advice: 3]

“So, Sister Eunsol. How certain are you regarding the ‘corruption’ of your brother, ‘Lee Sehyun’?”

“Mr. Priest. My brother has always been a curious person ever since he was a child. Back then, everyone considered that to be the curiosity of a child and found it delightful to watch but… there were many times when I sensed an underlying madness inside him.”

“As you probably know, we cannot say anything with certainty with just that.”

“At one point, my brother started interacting with strange foreigners coming over from Africa and Europe. Let me tell you, I was not childish or foolish enough to not know that those people were not residents of the world of light.

He became persuaded and started spending more time with them, and began collecting strange items and weird books. Especially books! He always brought new books from somewhere.

I could tell from a distance just by seeing them, that those books weren’t things that should be allowed in this world.”

“Hmm. And is the Order considering that book to be the ‘Book of Incarnation’?”

“Yes, that is the case, Cardinal Mooksung. There has been a prophecy given to the Order that the ‘Book of Incarnation’, which had enshrouded the world in darkness 400 years ago, was somewhere in the Korean Peninsula. This place could be the hiding spot of that book.”

BEEEEEEEEEEEEP—!!

…

We ‘came to ourselves’ along with the beep of a broken radio.

In a stupor, we all turned to each other and that was when I realized something.

“So our job… wasn’t about helping the exorcists.”

“Looks like we are the exorcists!” shouted Grandpa Mooksung. “Is the Hotel crazy? I don’t know a single line of the bible! What kind of priest doesn’t know anything about the bible?”

“Ahahaha~! So as the only ‘cardinal’ of our group, what do you think we should do, Grandpa Mooksung?”

“Goodbye. I will drive the car and leave this place, so it will be on you guys.”

Everyone was about to lose themselves.

…Not only was the time period of the scenario modified to the past, but the ‘exorcists’ which we had been expecting to be our greatest allies were in fact ourselves!

There was no-one here to help us! We had to find out the truth behind ‘Lee Sehyun’, the owner of the mansion, as the exorcists.

Jinchul-hyung threw out a straight-forward idea.

“Anyway, that Lee Sehyun guy is the criminal, right? Let’s just go and bash him to death. Wouldn’t that solve everything?”

“Please, Jinchul,” Eunsol-noona replied with a sigh. “It has never been that easy, has it?”

That was when Elena raised a question.

“Where’s Seungyub and Ahri?”

Only then did I look around the car and realize that neither Seungyub nor Ahri were here. I turned to Eunsol-noona, who also looked very surprised.

“Huh? I don’t know if they are at the mansion or not this time either.”

Everyone was clueless as to what to do and surprisingly, it was Songee that took control.

“Everyone. Let’s calm down for now. We all have information given to us about our ‘roles’, right? Let’s talk about that first. Seungyub and Ahri will be fine; they’ll be somewhere around the mansion or the village.”

I also talked about what first came to mind.

“The bell! Does anyone have the bell? I’m going through my memories right now, and apparently it’s called the ‘Bell of Saint George’. It’s a divine item that can tear down demonic powers. Who has it?”

“I have it with me,” Grandpa replied. “I’m the cardinal so of course I need to hold onto something that impressive.”

“Says the cardinal that was about to run away first.”

The car was in utter chaos.

I couldn’t help but heave a sigh.

Hah… This wasn’t good!

A priest that didn’t know a single line of the bible and a cardinal that has never been to a cathedral. Amazing!

Room 102 was not looking easy either.

While sighing to myself, I realized that I was given the role of a deacon.

If you could become a priest without knowing a line of the bible, why wasn’t I the cardinal? What was a deacon anyway!?

***

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