Escaping the Mystery Hotel-Chapter 274: Meeting (1)

Chapter 274: Meeting (1)

User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 131

Current Location: Floor 1, Corridor

Sage’s Advice: 3

- Han Kain

By evening, the meeting had begun.

Even Elena, who had skipped meals and remained in her room, had returned—perhaps having recovered a little.

As soon as she sat down, Songee naturally reached out and held her hand tightly.

Meanwhile, Eunsol-noona, who had been scribbling in her notebook, finally spoke, “I’ve written down what we need to go over in today’s meeting. Check the whiteboard.”

The whiteboard had the following points listed:

Compile the information everyone has gathered.

Decide on the next course of action.

Investigate the damn hourglass.

...Everyone smirked bitterly at the one item written with actual emotion.

Seriously, what is that damn hourglass?

We had to take another look at it before the day was over.

The doctor scanned the board before picking up a marker and adding another item.

“Let’s talk about this too.”

Should we try another room?“Alright! We’ll discuss that as well. But let’s go in order, starting with point one. Since we were all scattered across different areas, let’s share what we learned. First up—Mountain Party, go ahead. I’ve heard bits and pieces. You guys found some kind of ruined ancient civilization, right?”

The doctor, Grandpa, and I recounted everything we had encountered while crossing the mountains—the robots, the crater beyond them, and the remnants of a collapsed civilization.

We also explained how Ahri, controlled by some unknown force, had attacked us.

Ahri, listening intently, tilted her head.

“So, Room 203 is basically a post-apocalyptic world? There used to be a thriving human civilization, but it got wiped out by some incomprehensible force? And the primitive tribes outside are their descendants?”

That was the first theory Jinchul-hyung had suggested.

But we had heard too many strange words for it to be that simple.

“When I possessed you, I heard something odd. That entity inside you called us descendants of traitors.”

“Descendants of traitors...? So, the people outside the city are the descendants of traitors? That would mean that back when that city was still intact, some group of people rebelled, fled to the wilderness, and their descendants became the primitive tribes?”

“Let’s think this through a bit more.”

Something was missing.

There was something I had heard before I possessed Ahri...

“Beings that are not human have no right to exist—only the right to die. The traitors and their descendants are no exception.”

“Huh?”

“I think you said something like that.”

“That sounds... completely deranged.”

A brief silence fell over the room before Eunsol-noona furrowed her brows.

“That phrasing is kind of weird, isn’t it? It sounds like there were non-human entities present at the time.”

“Non-human entities... Hey, Sanghyun, do you have something to say?”

Suddenly, Grandpa directed the question at the doctor.

“Didn’t you say something seemed off about the primitives when we first met?”

The doctor, lost in thought for a moment, finally spoke, “I’m not certain, but while treating the tribespeople, I often got an odd feeling. Their bodies were subtly different from human anatomy. But the problem is... as you all know, my ‘healing’ ability isn’t exactly medical—it’s almost magical. My hands pass through people’s bodies, so I can only sense their internal structure through touch.”

“So, you’re saying you felt something weird, but you can’t be sure because you didn’t actually see it?”

“Exactly. I kept encountering things like—‘Why is this bone here?’ and ‘There’s no blood vessel here?’ or ‘This area has no muscle, so how is this limb even moving?’—that kind of thing. But since I never actually dissected one, I can’t say for sure.”

The conversation was shifting toward the possibility that the primitives weren’t even human.

Jinchul-hyung added his thoughts, “Kain and I talked about something similar. You guys know that Divine Ones are just as weird as the primitives, right? They don’t come from the primitive tribes.”

“I heard that too. Apparently, newborn Divine One just appeared out of nowhere. Like... what, a stork drops them off?”

Something clicked.

That was why Seungyub’s tribe had tried to burn him alive.

They didn’t hesitate to kill someone with divine powers because... if they did, the heavens would just send a new one.

I spoke up, “I don’t think the primitives are human. And the term ‘Divine One’ seems to hold a lot of hidden meaning. Based on the context, I think the ‘traitors’ descendants’ that Adversary Ahri mentioned might have been referring to the Divine One. We need to go back and confirm. Next time, Doctor, what do you think about actually dissecting one to be sure?”

At the mention of dissection, the group visibly flinched.

But it was necessary.

The doctor, after a moment of consideration, nodded with a determined expression.

“I’ll do it when the opportunity arises.”

“Also, let’s not forget something important. We all encountered monsters when we first entered, right? Seungyub’s tribe was too busy searching for food, so he probably didn’t see them, but the rest of us did.”

Everyone nodded.

“Those creatures had strange tendrils embedded in them. Through possession, I confirmed that the tendrils were entirely separate organisms from the hosts. I suspect they were created by some demonic entity and scattered throughout the world.”

“I did notice they were separate organisms when I tore them out, but I just chalked it up to this world being full of grotesque things.”

Jinchul-hyung nodded.

Ahri then raised a question, “Could those tendrils have been created by the civilization inside the mountains?”

“Not sure... Would a fallen civilization even have the capability to create something like that?”

“Maybe they made them a long time ago?”

The doctor shook his head.

“I don’t think so. You guys who saw the ruins firsthand would understand—the tendrils felt different from everything else there.”

I agreed, “Yeah. The ancient civilization in the mountains felt strangely familiar. Even the robots had an oddly recognizable feel to them. It was clearly the remains of an advanced human civilization—far beyond 21st-century Earth.”

“But those tendrils? They’re not the same. Those are definitely the product of some supernatural force.”

Eunsol-noona interjected, “Then... could the tendrils be remnants of whatever destroyed the mountain civilization?”

No one could answer that.

A heavy silence filled the room until Eunsol-noona held up her notebook.

“I’ve written down the key things we still need to figure out. First, the true nature of the primitives and the Divine One. The primitives might not be human, so we need to dissect one. Second, the true nature of the tendrils. They might be remnants of whatever destroyed the ancient civilization.”

“That about covers what the Mountain Party gathered.”

“Ah!”

Seungyub suddenly raised his hand.

“I saw something really strange at the very end!”

“Strange?”

“You guys remember how Ahri-noona set a trap to cut my leg—“

“Seungyub, please... That phrasing is way too unsettling, use something like ‘Adversary Ahri’.”

“Ah, right. Anyway, after my leg was half-cut and Grandpa threw me aside, I was rolling on the ground and saw this big hole in one of the buildings. I think it was from when Adversary Ahri fired her laser to incinerate Elena-noona—“

“Seriously, stop!”

“Anyway, that laser also blew apart a section of the building behind her. And inside... I saw something. The Protective Suit.”

The Protective Suit!

That word triggered a realization.

I had been wondering where the hell those suits were, and now Seungyub was saying they had been in the ruins of the city inside the basin?

“But when I got closer, I realized they weren’t Protective Suits. They just looked like them. They were white, covered in complex machinery, and had something like oxygen tanks attached. And there weren’t just a few of them—there were hundreds, maybe thousands, lined up along the walls. I was touching one, trying to figure it out, when suddenly a bomb came flying at me from behind, and... well, I died.”

Suits resembling the Protective Suit, equipped with intricate machinery and oxygen tanks.

A few possibilities came to mind—diving suits, space suits, and similar protective gear.

But hundreds of them?

Eunsol-noona added another line to the whiteboard.

5. Identify the nature of the numerous suits in the ruins of the destroyed city.

“Noona, I think that about covers what the Mountain Party learned. What about you guys? What did your group find out?”

Eunsol-noona and Songee exchanged glances, both looking equally confused.

“Well... Kain-oppa. Actually, this might be a bit disappointing to say, but... we have no idea.”

“No idea?”

“Really, I have no clue. We just followed the shadow of some weird creature in the sky—one that I couldn’t even see, only Eunsol-unni could. We chased it for about ten days, and then, out of nowhere, we got a message: ‘Congratulations! You have successfully escaped!’”

“I don’t really get it either... The only thing I noticed, which you guys probably didn’t, was the weather.”

“The weather?”

“It was getting abnormally cold. So I started wondering if the ‘curse’ was actually some kind of ice age. I didn’t know anything about the ruins, the ancient civilization beyond the mountains, or any of that.”

An ice age.

Another possible key to understanding this room.

“But Unni, what do you think that being in the sky was? It just floated around, yet its mere presence seemed to revitalize the entire world. That kind of miracle... it had to be a Convict, right? But it never spoke to us.”

“No clue. If it was a Convict, maybe it couldn’t talk to us because of ‘restrictions’ placed on it.”

Until the fifth attempt, Convicts were bound by powerful constraints that prevented them from interfering too much.

Until then, they functioned almost like NPCs, following pre-set behaviors.

The only exception we had encountered so far was the Lord of Room 104.

At that moment, Elena, who had been silent throughout the meeting, mumbled something in a small voice.

“...Purification.”

“Elena?”

“First of all... I just want to say I’m sorry. I almost caused a disaster because I lost my mind.”

“You don’t need to worry about it. None of us have been completely sane since arriving at this hotel. Going crazy and attacking people is practically a rite of passage at this point...”

Ahri snickered.

“Yeah! I literally burned Elena alive with a laser, and you don’t see me apologizing. No need to make a big deal out of these things.”

“Thanks. Then let me tell you something I realized. Don’t you think the power I used in Room 203 was absurd?”

“Absurd?”

“Not just creating a single terrifying moth monster, but transforming hundreds—no, thousands—of people into monsters as if it were nothing. Producing that many creatures as easily as breathing. Do you really think that was just the power of Ominous Imagination?”

I blinked. I had never really thought about it that way.

Elena, her expression firm, continued, “That power far exceeded the limits of Ominous Imagination. Think about it. Even Beatrix, from Room 201, whose ability was both more refined and fundamentally stronger than mine, couldn’t mass-produce monsters so easily.”

I got what she was saying.

Beatrix had created monsters in Room 201, but she had done so through meticulous, hand-crafted processes.

In contrast, Elena had mass-produced an army of creatures within just ten days, blanketing the sky with them as if she were running a factory.

“I can say this with certainty. The only creatures I actually created were the first moth, myself, and... well, Seungyub’s modifications. That’s it. Just three.”

Grandpa, who had been listening with a bewildered expression, finally voiced what everyone was thinking.

“Then what the hell were the rest?”

Elena hesitated.

“That’s what I want to know. At the time, I wasn’t even thinking about ‘creating monsters’. My thoughts were more like... purifying a twisted world through the power of fairies.”

I was starting to get a headache.

We had gathered so many key pieces of information—the primitives and Divine One, the tendrils, the equipment Seungyub discovered, the potential ice age, and now, the true reason Elena had been able to create so many monsters.

The problem was... we still didn’t have a thread that connected them all.

“Alright! That’s enough information gathering for now. I think we’ve covered just about everything. Now we move on to Point 2. Of course, there’s still the question of whether we should switch rooms, but let’s leave that for the final discussion. For now, let’s assume we’re staying in Room 203. What’s our next step?”