Escaping the Mystery Hotel

- Kim Ahri

With the power of the Nightmare Butterfly, the gorilla began to suffer from intense drowsiness and mental anguish.

Mooksung and I ran over, panting, and relentlessly unloaded our rounds into the gorilla’s twisted flesh.

- Bang!

Elizabeth again!

With the sound of gunfire, Mooksung staggered as he clutched his shoulder.

Mooksung and I quickly moved to positions where we could use the gorilla's body as a shield.

Luckily, the gorilla was now partially incapacitated.

And we had our own invisible fighter as well!

In one part of the white space, we were unloading bullets into the gorilla to finish it off, while in another part, an eerie battle between the two invisible fighters began.

"Why won’t this bastard stay down? We’ve pumped over fifty rounds into it, and it’s still moving?"

Mooksung, who gritted his teeth in pain, stood up with a grim expression.

"I think it’ll die eventually if we keep this up. But a shot to the head will probably be the decisive blow we need."

Mooksung approached the gorilla’s already collapsing head, jammed the muzzle into its eye socket, and pulled the trigger.

Only then did the gorilla's writhing finally cease.

What an insanely tenacious vitality!

As I sighed and turned my head, I noticed that the battle between the invisible fighters was unfolding in a surprisingly comedic fashion.

Elizabeth couldn’t find Eunsol’s location and was wasting bullets shooting into the air, while Eunsol, only taking deep breaths when Elizabeth was looking in the wrong direction, was holding out.

On the other hand, Eunsol seemed to be able to pinpoint Elizabeth's position despite her invisibility thanks to her keen eyesight, but her poor marksmanship dragged out the fight.

This delicate balance was bound to end as soon as reinforcements joined the fray.

As Mooksung and I flanked Elizabeth from a distance, shrinking the area in which she could move, Elizabeth suddenly revealed herself, took off her helmet, and—

- Bang!

With one shot, the chaotic battle came to an end.

“Damn it! That bit—”

“Mooksung, there are kids around.”

“Ahem. That lunatic really gave us a hard time. Jinchul is going to be pissed.”

Eunsol was checking on Songee and Seungyub, who were lying on the ground.

When she quickly removed Songee’s bulletproof vest, there were multiple dark blue bruises the size of an adult man’s hand on her upper body.

Songee sighed and got up.

Seungyub’s condition was worse.

Despite wearing the Protective Suit, the impact from the gorilla’s overwhelming punch had not been fully absorbed.

He struggled to move as he gasped for breath.

Recovery was out of the question.

We needed to escape, at least.

At least the thought of the escape button was comforting.

If worse came to worst, we could use it to survive.

Eunsol rushed over.

"Ahri, you were right... I'm sorry."

"It’s fine. Next time, we’ll deal with Elizabeth first."

"Let’s make sure we take her gun away next time. We didn’t even get a chance to learn anything before she killed herself."

Looking around, this strange space had three exits, including the one we entered through.

Should Seungyub choose again this time?

Eunsol asked curiously, "This room is a ‘trap’, right?"

"Yeah. This means the rooms we have been going to so far were actually the right ones. We thought they were wrong because they all had monsters, but compared to this room, they might as well be heaven."

Songee, with a weary expression, approached.

"Ahri! I’m sorry..."

"It’s fine. It was a confusing situation."

Aside from the apologies, I reflected for a moment.

Our group tends to avoid conflict by nature.

This tendency has certainly contributed to keeping our party from fracturing, but when a tough decision must be made, it causes hesitation.

That’s probably why they didn’t agree with what seemed like an extreme suggestion from me.

After all, it was a decision based on intuition, so I couldn’t provide solid reasoning.

I understood this, so I didn’t hold any grudges against my comrades.

However...

- Whack!

I smacked Mooksung on the head while sending him a private message.

Kim Ahri: You should’ve had my back!

This guy owes his life to my intuition more times than I can count, yet he didn’t listen to me?

If he had supported me, the others might have thought, "Hmm, maybe there’s something to it," and followed suit!

Mooksung, despite his age, just chuckled sheepishly.

"But there’s something a bit scary I want to talk about."

"We’re already in a terrifying situation, but go ahead."

"This gorilla, it had a ‘master’."

"..."

"Remember how I said I could slightly read the minds of Being of Chaos after Affinity got enhanced?"

"But the gorilla didn’t exactly show you much friendliness."

"I’m telling you, it had a master. And it seemed to be absolutely terrified of them. When it was brought down by the butterfly, it was strongly reminded of ‘someone’ and feared it would be punished. That master must have ordered it to kill everyone who entered."

This was terrifying and utterly exhausting news.

A being powerful enough to command such an overwhelming monster.

It must be the Adversary.

Who or what could it be?

At this point, shouldn’t we at least see its face?

I sighed and turned my head.

Seungyub, who had taken far worse damage than Songee, was still gasping for breath and unable to stand on his own.

I was just about to suggest we rest a bit longer so he could recover when—

MOVE!

Words appeared on the walls all around us.

Should we follow this instruction?

Looking around, my comrades seemed equally uncertain.

Songee, unable to hold back, asked, "Who’s writing these words, anyway? At first, it felt like some sort of notification from the Hotel, so we all naturally followed along, but it doesn’t seem like the Hotel would send messages in a place like this."

Surprisingly, Mooksung, who initially resisted being manipulated by the enemy, got up without a fuss.

"Well, whether it's that message or not, it’s probably time to move. We should get going before our guide can still consciously lead us."

Our guide.

No matter how you looked at it, Seungyub wasn’t going to get better just by resting.

Without proper treatment, his condition wouldn’t improve at all, and in this situation, losing consciousness could be a big problem.

As Mooksung said, if Seungyub passed out, we’d be left without a guide.

Seungyub weakly waved his hand in the air and then flipped a coin.

- Ting! Clink, clink, clink.

The coin rolled for a long time before hitting a door on one of the walls.

Mooksung, now donning the Protective Suit, hoisted Seungyub onto his back, and we started moving once again.

***We passed through the fifth and sixth mansions in quick succession.

Along the way, we destroyed a toaster that spewed out living bread and a wardrobe that housed a serial killer.

Once we established a response method, dealing with the monsters hiding in the mimic rooms wasn’t too difficult.

But no matter how many mansions we cleared, all that awaited us was another.

Eventually, we got exhausted and sat down after smashing a moving clock in the seventh mansion.

Seungyub, too, seemed to have reached his limit and fell asleep as if he’d passed out.

"What should we do now?"

"Continuing on like this feels endless. This is already the seventh mansion. Beyond this would be the eighth, and then the ninth."

Exhausted, Songee and Eunsol continued their conversation.

Meanwhile, I was pondering the nature of “Fortune”.

The power that was harder to explain than any other Blessing.

According to Seungyub, his sponsor is a childlike deity?

Fortune had many characteristics, but one crucial keyword stood out.

Faith.

Fortune became more powerful and useful for those with strong self-belief.

Paradoxically, Fortune was also the hardest Blessing to believe in.

It was about making choices based purely on intuition, without any logic.

If Seungyub started doubting himself after just a few wrong choices, then his luck would become ineffective.

Another problem was that the person themselves didn’t know whether their Blessing was active or not.

I recalled what happened in the Gate Room during the Jekyll and Hyde game.

Was it the second round? Or the third?

At some point, Seungyub started feeling pressured and stopped choosing Hyde.

He believed he hadn’t made a choice, and so did we.

But in hindsight, even that “non-choice” was a choice in itself.

Since Seungyub was Hyde, he couldn’t pick someone else.

But how could we understand such a choice at the moment?

Looking back, knowing the results, we could say, "Aha! Fortune was working even then!"

But at that moment, it was impossible to know if Fortune was active.

The story of Cassandra, the prophet from Greek mythology, came to mind.

She was cursed with perfect foresight but she would never be believed.

Fortune was eerily similar to that power.

A blessing that emphasizes faith more than any other was, but paradoxically, the hardest to believe in.

...As I continued this line of thinking, a thought struck me.

Maybe even now.

Maybe this situation was also the result of Fortune?

Like in the Jekyll and Hyde game, could “fainting and being unable to choose the next room” be another choice in itself?

Or was this all just my imagination, interpreting things in hindsight?

Watching my comrades tend to Seungyub and Songee, bandaging their wounds, I stood up to survey the surroundings.

***- Park Seungyub

Ah... It’s so hot.

My whole body feels like it’s on fire.

I haven’t been able to pinpoint where it hurts for a while now.

For some time, I’ve been thinking more about how tired I am, and how sleepy I am, rather than how much it hurts.

Grandpa Mooksung, who was tending to me here and there after removing the Protective Suit, eventually pushed me back into it.

I forced my mouth open.

“Grandpa...”

“Don’t talk. Just drink this.”

Grandpa handed me a syringe filled with red liquid.

“Is this the legendary elixir Kain-hyung searched so desperately, Ahri-noona’s blood?”

“...You’re still talking nonsense, so you must be okay.”

“You should probably just leave me here and take the Protective Suit back. It’s a waste for me to be wearing such a powerful tool when I can’t even move.”

“Come on, have a little faith.”

“But I can’t even move—”

“Your ‘Heaven’s Luck’ hasn’t triggered yet, right? Not even in front of that gorilla. I believe you still have one more moment to shine.”

“...”

After saying that, Grandpa placed the “Escape Button” in my hand.

Where does this unwavering faith come from?

Has Heaven’s Luck really activated every time I was in danger?

Honestly, Heaven’s Luck feels more like my patron activates it whenever they feel like it.

Maybe because I drank that legendary elixir? Somehow, I felt a bit more energetic.

I heard that Ahri-noona’s healing powers weren’t that strong when she was healthy, but it seemed to have some effect.

Or maybe it was just the placebo effect.

Lying here blankly, I think I could understand Grandpa’s mindset.

The truth was, we were in a pretty desperate situation.

We had lost most of our firepower, two of our comrades had died, everyone was exhausted, and we had no idea how to escape.

In this situation, Grandpa’s last hope seemed to be my Heaven’s Luck.

In other words, it was less about believing and more about wanting to believe.

Somewhere nearby, I heard the sound of something breaking.

Grandpa jumped up, startled.

For the first time in a long while, a notification appeared on its own.

Heaven’s Luck Activated!

The energy of the universe is protecting you.

Isn’t Heaven’s Luck a name Ahri-noona made up...?

Now that even Grandpa’s calling it Heaven’s Luck, have you decided to call it that too, Patron?

And the message changes every time. It used to say something like “777!”, but now it’s about the energy of the universe.

Ah, whatever.

If the energy of the universe is protecting me, I guess I’ll be fine somehow!

I just closed my eyes and relaxed.

I suddenly felt envious of Kain-hyung, who had been asleep for a long time.

***- Kim Ahri

As I looked around, I continued my earlier train of thought.

Assuming Seungyub collapsing itself is a form of choice, why didn’t Fortune choose the next room?

“…”

Because this room is the right one!

Hoping against hope, I began to examine my surroundings.

I touched and inspected every object, and looked over the walls and tables.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Is it just my imagination after all?

As I continued stalling, familiar words appeared in the mirror near the sink.

Move!

Who exactly is sending these messages?

Our group is mentally and physically exhausted. Most importantly, Seungyub, who is supposed to guide us, can barely stay conscious.

We can’t keep following these instructions.

Using my Ancient Blood, I wrote a reply.

No!

“…”

“...”

“...”

[Fine. Then let’s play!]

- Crash!

A hand shot out of the mirror like a blade, piercing through my body in an instant.