Escaping the Mystery Hotel

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 21

Current Location: Floor 1, Corridor

Sage’s Advice: 0]

There wasn’t the usual announcement about the Hotel’s evaluation or anything, and straight away we were back to the corridor.

I looked around feeling dizzy and noticed that everyone else had also fallen out of the room at the same time.

We stared at each other with a blank look on our faces.

Before long, everyone hugged each other, full of joy, and spent a moment of happiness.

*

“Ah~. That was embarrassing. I wasn’t expecting to get squashed to death on the 1st stage out of 7 stages.”

“It’s not your fault, grandpa. No-one was expecting the glass to be bullet-proof all of a sudden. I also couldn’t do anything and just flew off and died. I thought I could be useful with my bracelet.”

“Guys, it was even worse for me. I thought it was all over and in my head, I was wondering what the next mission would be about and then that son of a bitch just… Ah! That still annoys me.”

“Well, it’s great that you didn’t make any mistake at the entrance of the mansion, hyung. If you did, we might have had to fight against all the monsters of the mansion.”

“Ah. I flew into the air and died with Songee so I can’t say anything. How did you die, Seungyub?”

“A piece of stone fell on my head the moment I got on the roller coaster. It was so frustrating because my Fortune was at 98% there! Seriously, that was sad! I could have kited everything if that was activated!”

“Well, that means it should be 100% now so that’s even better. I’m sure it’ll come in handy later on.”

“By the way, Ahri. Can you heal using your blood all the time?” I asked.

“Are you going to suck my blood even more?”

“…”

“That was a joke. My blood can help you recover stamina but I can’t make it heal you that often. When I’m close to dying, my blood automatically tries to heal me and gains a healing power. So if you want to heal your injury later on, all you have to do is smack my head and suck my blood out.”

“…”

“That was a joke.”

“It’s my first time hearing a joke like that…”

“I am sad about mine as well. The person appearing in the reflection of the mirror was changing the whole time so I thought that was the strangest mirror… I wasn’t expecting that to be the answer,” said Elena.

“It was really hard to make you believe us, Miss Elena,” I replied.

“Well actually, I think the solution was rather simple and you might have been going the long way around.”

“Sorry?”

“If you just showed up, Kain-ssi, I think that would have been enough.”

What did she mean by that? I quickly turned my head away in confusion.

“Now now!” Jinchul-hyung said. “Everything’s good and we pretty much had our fill, so let’s undo one of the questions we have in our minds. When exactly are we going to receive the reward of that disgustingly annoying ‘Mission Room’?”

“Before, the bracelet was on my arm right after the resolution of the room. I wonder how the Mission Room rewards will be given?”

“Well, calm down guys,” said Mooksung-grandpa. “The Hotel is probably not going to skip out a reward on us. We can take our time finishing our food and I’m sure there will be an announcement on one of the displays or something.”

Grandpa Mooksung’s guess was right on the mark.

An announcement showed up on the display screen immediately after our meal.

/Esteemed guests! Congratulations on clearing the Mission Room!

We, the staff of the Hotel are sincerely happy to see that our guests have progressed a step further. 

Of course, hard work must be met with sufficient rewards.

Your Reward Event is waiting for you at the front desk!/

They were calling it a Reward Event instead of a reward. Was it different from simply dropping a reward?

When we arrived at the front desk, we couldn’t hide our astonishment.

“Y, you bastard!”

“Haha! Hello everyone. We met just a while back, did we not? I am incredibly happy to see everyone again.”

“Are you in charge of the ‘Reward Event’ as well?”

“This Hotel is such a terrible employer to have and I have no choices. I am already busy selling items and yet they’re putting me in charge of an event on top of that! However, I will gladly push myself to lengths if it means I can help you, esteemed ladies and gentlemen.”

At the front desk was the same merchant, who had shown up at the camping grounds in the basement, wearing different clothes.

As soon as I saw his face, I was put in an incredibly bad mood.

And at the same time, I had a feeling that the ‘Reward Event’ wouldn’t be anything normal.

“Seeing your face is making me tired already. Just give us our rewards. What is it? An Inheritance?”

“Great question! The answer is… ‘No-one knows’!”

Hearing that, Jinchul-hyung almost raised his fist but after hearing the next sentence from the merchant, he lowered it back down.

“Haha. This gentleman here is always very quick to action. Looks like I am not very welcome here, so I will go straight to the topic.

The reward will be random! You have five chances! All you have to do is hit balloons with the gun I give you.

What will there be in the balloons? No-one knows, but the balloons do have different grades. And of course, a higher-graded balloon will give better rewards.

There are a total of 100 balloons, consisting of 1 golden balloon, 19 silver balloons and 80 bronze balloons.

By the way, each bullet can only bust one balloon at a time. Unfortunately, they can’t pierce through the balloons.

Now! Let us begin!”

As soon as the merchant was done with his words, the dimensions fluctuated like what we experienced when going into a Hotel room and we reappeared at the ‘shooting range’. There was one rifle placed on a desk with 100 balloons flying around at a rapid speed on the other end of the range.

Everyone blankly tried to comprehend what was going on and—

In the end, Eunsol-noona couldn’t control herself and pointed the rifle at the merchant.

“Everything always goes bad when we see you. Can I start off by shooting your head?”

“You can. However, that will also reduce your number of chances.”

Noona couldn’t make herself pull the trigger.

This was seriously dumbfounding. A random gacha system after coming this far? How could the reward for all our deaths and trouble be a gacha?

“How could they give something so luck-dependent like this as a reward…?”

“Luck-dependent? No, no, no, it depends on your shooting skills. All you have to do is shoot that golden balloon. You see that there, right?”

So that was the balloon huh! There was a golden balloon that was the size of a peanut! Absurdly enough, not only was the golden balloon the smallest, but it was also the fastest. 

Grandpa Mooksung picked up the gun and broke our silence.

“I believe I am the best shooter here so I will try shooting it. What do you guys think?”

He was right and thus no-one raised any objections.

Except for Jinchul-hyung who had gone to the military as a compulsory service, none of us had even touched a gun, and from what we had tested multiple times after obtaining the pistol, grandpa was a lot more skilled than Jinchul-hyung at shooting.

After going to the side, Eunsol-noona prayed with a shout.

“Sir, please! Please! Even if no gold, please get at least silver!”

“Come on, don’t pressure me too much. The silver balloon looks ridiculously hard enough already.”

As he said, it didn’t seem like it would be easy to hit the silver balloons either. The balloons themselves were of the same size and the same speed as the bronze balloons but the problem was that the 80 bronze balloons were restlessly moving around to hide the silver balloons behind them.

Grandpa Mooksung raised the rifle as we got on our knees and prayed together.

Please, God, Buddha, Allah, Zoroaster, whatever. Whoever it is, please give us a silver balloon!

— Bang!

Like a miracle, the bullet landed on a silver balloon.

“Wow! Nice shot boss!”

“What do you mean ‘boss’? Guys. Just be quiet and let me focus.”

The balloon popped and showed the thing inside, which appeared like a letter with the following words on it.

<Clues to the resolutions of the Cursed Rooms>

That wasn’t that bad was it? I got a feeling that this was decent for a ‘silver balloon’. We were going to re-enter the Cursed Rooms soon to obtain Inheritances anyway, so any clues were going to be helpful.

Everyone was turning excited when the next gunshot echoed through the range.

— Bang!

Bronze balloon.

…

Silence befell the range.

A letter appeared from the balloon.

<3-Day Rest Ticket>

Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. 

We had been racing the whole time without taking any rest. I was hoping we could have some time off so having a break for 3 days wasn’t bad.

I tried to have a positive mindset but it wasn’t that easy. 

A break wasn’t bad but we needed something that would be more helpful for us.

— Bang!

Another bronze balloon.

A small plastic box fell from the balloon.