Escaping the Mystery Hotel

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 21

Current Location: Floor 1, Room 106 (Mission Room – Hotel Land of Hope)

Sage’s Advice: 3]

1. Real Life Bumper Car

—-Vuuuuung!!!

The monster truck began its assault before I could even come to myself. The first prey that the monster truck chose as its target was—

Wait, what the fuck it’s me! I don’t even have a licence!

I quickly racked my brain and recalled how my dad used to drive.

Somehow, I turned the key and started the car. After putting the lever thing to ‘drive’ mode, I mindlessly lowered my gaze to the bottom and…

Which one’s the accelerator and which one’s the brake? Why are there two pedals?

[Press on the right pedal]

Thank you so much! I hurriedly pressed on the right pedal and the car started to move forward.

—Kugugugung!

That was the sound echoing from behind. Plus, I could feel the ground shaking for some reason whenever the truck moved! What kind of bumper car was this?

I was driving and turning the car like crazy and that was when I noticed something. This seemed to be because of the last bit of conscience this Hotel had, but the monster truck wasn’t that fast.

Meanwhile, the conversation tab was getting heated up.

Kim Mooksung: Turn the key, start the car, set to drive and press on the accelerator!

Park Seungyub: Which one’s the accelerator? And how do I set to drive?”

Lee Eunsol: Move the stick next to you to D, and press on the right pedal near your feet!

Yu Songee: Why isn’t it lighting up?

Lee Eunsol: You have to turn the key all the way! If you still can’t move, then check if your gear stick is on N or P!

Cha Jinchul: You will all die if you don’t hurry up! Fortunately, it went after Kain but still!

Han Kain: Fortunately my ass! I’m dying here!

I was really dying out here. Was that truck crazy? Why was it always coming after me? Without even turning around, I could tell from the deafening noise and vibration that the truck was right behind me.

In the middle of my frantic escape, I noticed that the truck had changed its target.

Yu Songee: Uahhhhh! It’s coming after me!

Lee Eunsol: Press! Shut up and press your accelerator!

The truck started going after a silver car. Shifting left and right, the silver car blindly raced forward.

Cha Jinchul: You’ll crash into the wall if you go straight! Turn your handle!

Yu Songee: To where?

Lee Eunsol: Right side. Right!

The silver car turned ‘left’.

Lee Eunsol: Wait, there’s also a wall there. Go right!

In the midst of that chaotic pursuit, the silver car belatedly turned to the right and barely survived from the truck. Seeing how she could still escape from the truck despite moving like that in utter chaos, I realised it once again.

The truck was quite slow and took time to change directions.

Cha Jinchul: Does that go after the closest car?

Kim Mooksung: I’ll get closer and have a look!

In about 10 seconds, the truck finally changed its target to different cars. Two cars that were evidently more skilled at manoeuvres started travelling around the truck to catch its attention.

Judging from the slow driving and turning speed of the truck, those two cars should be able to buy a fair bit of time.

In the meantime, we had to come up with a plan.

Han Kain: It’ll be over if people bad at driving get targeted, so move to the outskirts of the arena right now!

Lee Eunsol: Good idea. Save letters from now. We need plans.

Han Kain: Called bumper cars but the size difference is too big. Our cars will be the only ones breaking.

Lee Eunsol: Agreed. Crashing cars is not an option.

Kim Ahri: Maybe make the truck crash itself into the wall?

Lee Eunsol: Can we even?

Kim Mooksung: We are not F1 drivers. Driving like that is not easy.

What were we supposed to do?

I couldn’t come up with a good plan. If we were to crash the cars, it would be a one-sided loss for us. 

And we couldn’t induce the truck to crash itself into the wall either because none of us was that superb with driving.

Besides, would the truck driver be stupid enough to drive the truck into the wall just because we tried to incite that?

I unconsciously turned to the driver’s seat and saw a faint figure of a person.

Wait, a person?

Han Kain: There’s a person on the driver’s seat of the truck.

Kim Mooksung: Well, of course there would be someone in a car.

Han Kain: How about killing the driver with the gun? Anyone confident?

Kim Mooksung: …Didn’t think about that.

It was fortunate that we had given the gun over to Grandpa Mooksung, who had experience shooting a pistol, before entering the room. 

Was he confident in landing his shots? I wasn’t exactly sure about his past, but he mentioned here and there how he had spent his whole life on the battlefield. 

Kim Mooksung: Jinchul! Grab its attention for a bit.

Cha Jinchul: OK.

Soon, the grey sedan approached the truck. When the truck turned towards the sedan, it kept an appropriate distance while luring the truck away. 

It seemed that Jinchul-hyung was the one inside the grey sedan.

Kim Mooksung: Ready to fire. Come to me.

Jinchul-hyung skilfully lured the truck towards the black car. The window of the driver’s seat of the black car slid down as Grandpa Mooksung brought his upper body outside.

Was it going to be over like this? Shooting the driver should solve the problem right?

As soon as the truck that was passing nearby changed its target to the black car that was now closer than other cars–

— Bang! Bang! Bang!

Consecutive gunshots echoed across. At last!

Kim Mooksung: Shit! That’s bulletproof glass! That freaking—

The truck drove over the black sedan.

…

Just like that, one of us was disqualified and we lost our communication tab.

What were we supposed to do now?

Without giving us the time to think to ourselves, the truck unhesitatingly decided on the next target. This time, the target was Seungyub, who was still at an awkward spot in the arena due to not knowing how to operate the car.

—-Vuuung!

The ground jolted as a deafening roar filled the arena. 

Right before colliding with the truck, Seungyub somehow moved the car but it was not enough to escape from the truck.

Perhaps thanks to his quick thinking, Seungyub opened the door of the car and jumped out.

Soon, the truck drove over Seungyub’s car.

–Ignoring the person, it trampled on the car.

Seeing that, I immediately realised something. Another person who had the same flash of thought as me shouted as loudly as they could.

“Everyone! Get out of your cars!!!”

We frantically jumped out of our cars.

The theme of the first mission was ‘bumper cars’. Bumper car was a game where cars crashed into each other; not one that crashed into humans!

We were right on the mark.

The truck ignored us after we left the cars and persistently began destroying all the cars. After gathering together since there was no reason not to, Songee raised a question.

“Will we pass the mission if we wait like this?”

“Don’t think so. I think we have to stop that truck somehow. We only have 4 cars left on our side.”

“What if all our cars end up breaking?”

“That… will probably be our loss.”

…

The situation at hand was very obvious. If we were to stay here without our cars, we could avoid dying to the truck but there was no way for us to win.

Bumper car was a fight between cars. Regardless of our survival, it would probably be our defeat if the truck destroyed all our vehicles..

What would happen if we were to lose here? What about Grandpa Mooksung? Will everything be over with him dead?

Our faces started turning pale after thinking about his death.

“We have to crush it. We must somehow destroy that truck. We can’t let him die like this.”

“You’re right but is there a way to physically destroy that thing? Can you use your bracelet, Songee?”

“I’ve been trying for a while,” she replied. “But the truck is enormous and the driver’s seat is too high up, and the truck is moving all the time so I can’t target the person inside.”

“Miss Elena. Can you use your Blessing of Justice?” Jinchul-hyung asked.

“I also tried to but I couldn’t. What I could instinctively tell was that Grandpa Mooksung was the first to point his gun. So–”

“The truck driver was acting in self-defence so I guess that doesn’t count as an ‘evil act’. But what about the truck threatening us from the start? Is that not evil because that’s part of the bumper car game?

That blessing is kind of ridiculous the more I see it. We only have 2 cars left now. I think Kain might have to use his Descent if need be. Can you break that truck if you descend?” asked Eunsol-noona.

Descent. I recalled the feelings from before.

“Honestly, I’m confident I can destroy even a thousand of those trucks.”

“That’s why we shouldn’t use Descent for something like this,” said Jinchul-hyung. “That’s like killing a chicken with a dragon-slaying sword. I have an idea. Let me try something.”

“Hyung?”

Jinchul-hyung walked forward in large strides without saying anything else. We only had one car left now.

Even though we weren’t sure about what he was trying to do, we definitely had to do something so no-one stopped him. 

He headed towards the truck without any hesitation. The monster truck started to turn in order to head to its last target and–

Jinchul-hyung jumped 5 metres up and clung onto the driver’s seat!

He then smashed the door like a gorilla and successfully went into the driver’s seat.

“…”

“…”

“I guess you can just brute force it like that.”

“He is really strong. That truck door looks like refined steel – how did he crush that thing with his bare fist? Looks like he got even stronger than before.”

“Maybe he’s getting more and more used to his blessing.”

The driver that was originally inside the truck was thrown away in tatters while Jinchul-hyung calmly drove the truck into the outer walls of the arena.

/Mission 1. Real Life Bumper Car: Success! Congratulations. Would you like to proceed to your next mission?/

Ah. It seemed that you could decide whether you wanted to continue with the missions or not, but we had no other option at this point.

There was a message we saw at the beginning.

/If there is a survivor at the end of the attractions, everyone that died in the process will be brought back to life./

In other words, it meant that everyone that died in the process would stay dead unless we passed all the missions.

“Let’s proceed.”

“We have no other options. We have to revive Grandpa.”

*

Everyone silently walked forward and faced another alarm.

/2. Challenge. Human-devouring Merry-go-round.

3! 2! 1! Start!/

Human-devouring Merry-go-round.

After the dimensions stopped shaking and everything nearby returned to being clear, I found myself sitting on top of a strange horse that had an actual live head on a wooden body.

Suddenly, the horse turned its head and thrashed its neck around trying to eat me!

I immediately felt like jumping down from the horse and looked down at the floor but the floor was even more dumbfounding.

Sharp thorns that would probably pierce me to death upon contact were filling the floor of the carousel, and everyone was sitting on a ‘human-eating wooden horse’ that was placed on top of those thorns as we rotated in a clockwise direction.

What were we supposed to do here?

Everyone was confused as to what to do, but that was when Jinchul-hyung shouted with a thrilled voice.

“Wait up! I can pull these heads out!”

Despite the confusion, I couldn’t help but turn to him after hearing such an absurd statement. And after turning towards him, I saw that he really did ‘pull out’ the head of the live horse that was attached to the wooden body!

Was this mission also solvable through brute force?

At the same time, a question appeared in my mind.

‘Are merry-go-rounds supposed to be cleared by fighting against the horses?’