Escaping the Mystery Hotel

Chapter 104: Party Time (6) - Night of Deceit

Party Time Second Night

- Han Kain

There was a change to the status after the blessing was enhanced.

Teammate Information (!)

Kim Ahri (???) - ???. Top Agent of the Calamity Administration Bureau

I compared it to my own information.

Han Kain (20) - Wisdom. Freshman at K University

The first “???” was age, while the second “???” was the blessing.

Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised about her age, because I had long guessed that her actual age would be much different from what was suggested by her appearance.

Time wasn’t a reliable indicator inside the Hotel. Since she had stayed at a place like this for a long time, it was hard to specifically pinpoint her age.

There were 2 things, however, that were very surprising.

First was that her blessing wasn’t “Allusion”.

Until now, she had demonstrated something similar to hypnosis several times already, but was that not the power of her blessing?

Is it her own superpower?

I didn’t know but if so, then what was her actual blessing?

Second was that it was possible to deceive the system window.

In some ways, this was even more important than the first. The system window was a system and authority provided by the Hotel and yet… was it possible to deceive that?

Until now, it had been showing a blatantly wrong piece of information and even now, it wasn’t revealing the truth.

Although I didn’t have any proof, I came to a hypothesis that superpowers gained outside of the Hotel probably wouldn’t be able to deceive the system window. The things we had experienced inside the Hotel, after all, were way too transcendent for that to be the case.

Maybe this was related to her “real blessing”.

What am I supposed to do now?

Should I go and ask? That would be pointless because Ahri could simply tell a lie.

Should I take Elena and interrogate her? That would be like picking an actual fight.

After having that strife once, we had come to a tacit agreement that we wouldn’t interrogate or push the Administration Team.

Besides, we were right before facing a large challenge called the “Gate Room”.

Was it wise to pick a fight right before such an important threshold?

But what if what they were hiding would serve to be a harm for us?

To lessen my confusion, I decided to rely on Advice.

Is there a way to resolve my doubt while avoiding conflict?

Sage's Advice: 3 → 2

Why be at a psychological disadvantage? Just make the other party worry.

What did this mean? I deeply pondered for a while.

I had no idea what it meant when I first heard it, but the more I thought about it the more I began to realize how useful this piece of advice truly was.

I wasn’t the only one who wanted to avoid conflict.

That might have been the case if this was earlier on in our journey, but my current abilities were by no means less important than Ahri’s. She would also want to avoid a possible conflict with the upcoming hardship right in front of us.

If we were on equal grounds, why should I worry about it by myself and be nervous?

I decided to dump that task on Ahri.

Seriously, “Sage’s Advice” is really a great tool.

With a light heart, I opened the door and headed to the dining room.

***

- Han Kain

I was met with a warm welcome as soon as I walked out, and joined them for dinner. The topic of our discussion through the meal was naturally the new effects of our blessings that we acquired.

Grandpa Mooksung was drinking beer while posting videos on the conversation tab.

***

Like, why is he posting pictures of twitching worms?

For goodness sake, the mysterious and heavy image he had been portraying at the start was long gone. This felt like being forced to see disgusting images and videos on internet forums.

There was no way to avoid seeing videos and images that were being put on the conversation tab.

In retaliation to that, Songee kept posting images of Perro.

10 minutes passed by with pictures of worms and parrots being posted on repeat. I was blankly sitting there, unable to eat anything, until the conversation reached its daily limit.

Despite everything happening around her, Ahri was eating her meal like usual.

“...It feels like we can send a lot more than before.”

“I think so too. I didn’t expect to be able to continue that little prank for this long.”

“Please, sir. I hope you won’t do anything of this sort ever again…” Eunsol-noona said with a sigh, before talking about her own empowerment.

“Honestly,” she said. “I’m not too sure about mine.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t have a clear name like ‘Lie Detection’, and it’s called ‘Hand of Greed’, which is very ambiguous.”

“What if you use it?”

“That’s the thing. After I received this skill, I could also see a hologram that’s similar to Kain’s ‘system window’, and it says [Hand of Greed: 1]. When I try to use it, it says, [You will obtain what you wish for].”

“Obtain what you wish for? I wonder how.”

“Try Inheritance! Or Escape!” shouted Seungyub, after listening the whole time.

“I did that of course, but it says [Impossible].”

“Hmm… I guess it’s natural for there to be a limit. Let’s think about it a bit more before we use it.”

“Sounds good. What about you Kain?” she asked.

It was my time to talk about my blessing.

This was the chance to do it.

“I don’t think I can use mine, but I can try.”

Lifting my hand into the air, I pretended like I was touching a few buttons. The system window was only visible to me, so there was no way they could tell anything.

“It looks a bit different from before, actually.”

“How so?”

After saying that, I paused, widened my eyes into circles, and glanced at Ahri, before returning my gaze back to the front.

Before looking away, I confirmed her face turning stiff.

“What is it? Did something change?”

“No… Nothing changed. I think it’s only usable inside Cursed Rooms.”

“Cursed Rooms… What if we can't use it in the Gate Room?”

“I don’t think that’ll be the case. The Gate Room is just a harder version of Cursed Rooms, right? I’m sure we can use it.”

Since Grandpa Mooksung was the only one who could properly use the new skill, we soon stopped talking about our blessings.

After the meal, Eunsol-noona approached me with a list of questions like it was a natural thing.

***

I would have used Sage’s Advice without any hesitation if this was before, but the owl’s words were weighing on my heart. It was harder to use now that I knew how questions unrelated to Cursed Rooms ate up my contributions.

Firstly, I told her that I had already used the first advice on a question about my blessing. To be fair, it wasn't a lie.

When I looked at the list of questions Eunsol-noona gave me, I was lost for words.

The first question was as follows.

If the front entrance is Escape Route 2, there has to be 1. Give us a hint.

While I was standing there not knowing what to say, Jinchul-hyung poked his head in and commented.

“I thought about this before as well, but isn’t this a question on ‘something we have no idea about’? We probably won’t get a good response, right?”

“You never know,” Eunsol-noona replied with a strange light in her eyes, “Maybe we went past it and just missed it.”

Did she… know something about me hiding the information about the elevator? I prudently inspected her facial expression in detail.

???

Instead of looking at me, Eunsol-noona was glancing at the Administration duo.

What’s happening?

I wasn’t entirely sure, but it appeared that everyone was waiting for me to use the advice for that question.

…After some thought, I made up my mind.

It was going to be impossible to hide information about the elevator forever and besides, it was relatively easy to find that since you just had to focus on what was underneath the panel of buttons.

The only reason I knew it in the first place, was because I was the only one who thought about inspecting the elevator.

Like last time, I pretended like I was fidgeting with the system window.

“It says to be mindful of anywhere we missed.”

“Anywhere we missed?”

“Was there anywhere we didn’t check?”

Everyone tilted their heads in thought, but it wouldn’t take long for them to think of the elevator since we had already explored the basement and the 1st Floor.

Now that I was thinking about the elevator escape route, a “real question” also popped up in my mind. For Escape Route 1, one had to wear the protective suit and type in a passcode inside the elevator.

And I already knew that we could get personal protective equipment from HP Market.

I also knew the password, “87439124” which I found at the front desk.

Did this mean we had met all the requirements for the escape?

Can we escape if we wear a protective suit we buy from the HP Market and type in the password?

Sage's Advice: 2 → 1

Try it if you don’t value your life.

It gave the same answer as the parachute.

…Now I was starting to wrap my head around everything.

Escape Route 1 was the elevator, and Escape Route 2 was the main entrance.

Both routes had their “official escape tools”.

The main entrance was the “Winged Boots”, while the elevator was the “Protective Suit”. We had to obtain these items inside the Hotel, and they were most likely supernatural devices.

We could attempt to escape using normal items we purchase through the HP Market, but those had a low chance of success. Perhaps people like Jinchul-hyung with an extremely tough body or Ahri, who can fly by herself, might be able to escape using normal tools, but they were a minority.

After finishing my line of thought, I headed to the front desk by myself.

I walked in circles around the front reception with gloomy thoughts running around in my head.

I was becoming more and more of a liar…

Not only did I hide the elevator escape route, I was now even hiding traits about Sage’s Advice. Abusing the fact that my teammates couldn’t see the system window, I even faked the use of Advice.

Like little drops making the ocean, raindrops of deceit were slowly forming a puddle in my heart.

Once and twice. Another time due for so and so reasons.

Am I even a true teammate anymore?

It wasn’t just the emotional side of it that was troubling me either. Like how I was getting stronger myself, my teammates were each acquiring different supernatural powers.

One day, when they found out about all my lies, what would happen then?

I heaved a sigh to chase out those complicated feelings.

“Are you worried about something?” a voice suddenly echoed in my ears.

“Huhp! Who was that—” Quickly turning around, I checked who the speaker was. “Ahri? Like, why are you walking around quietly like that?” I protested.

“I just walked here,” she replied, “You were thinking so hard by yourself that you just didn’t hear me.”

“Really? Anyway, did you have something to tell me?”

Ahri stood by my side with an exhausted look on her face and started gazing outside the front entrance at the night sky.

“You know why I’m here,” she murmured.

“...”

“I just wanted to talk a little bit about my past.”

Thank you so much, o great sage! As you said, Ahri has come here to talk about it herself.

It was when I was starting to feel a deeper sense of respect for the owl.

The Hotel suddenly flickered with light!

What’s going on? Ahh, what bad timing!

***

- Lee Eunsol

After the meal, everyone dispersed to take some time for themselves.

As for me, I laid myself down on the bed to think about what this “Hand of Greed” could possibly be.

The dragon was brimming with confidence saying that it wouldn’t be disappointing, but why didn’t he tell me a few things about the skill if he was so confident?

It returned the same line no matter how many times I touched it.

You will obtain what you wish for

What a bold statement! And yet despite such a daring promise, it returned [Impossible] when I stated what I really wanted: Inheritance or Escape.

***

What I wish for, huh…?

It immediately popped up in my mind. A weapon.

In a place as dangerous as the Hotel, I needed to be able to protect myself.

Give me a decent weapon! Something easy to use would be better.

Hand of Greed: 1 → 0

Hmm?

Your wish has been granted

???

What is this talking about—

—WEEEEEEEEEEENGG!

Suddenly, a loud alarm started ringing the entirety of the Hotel.

I quickly stood up when the display screen inside Room 105 flickered with a notification.

Due to the request of a participant, a special event has occurred in spite of the Party Time.

***

***

***

Surprise Event: Nightmare

…This isn’t my fault, is /genesisforsaken