Escaping the Mystery Hotel

*

Fourth Attempt

*

[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 23

Current Location: Floor 1, Room 101 (Cursed Room – Common Sense Renovating Media)

Sage’s Advice: 3]

*

— Bang!

The exploration of the upper floors was a lot easier than the basement.

— Bang!

All we had to do was kill everyone on sight and it was the easiest thing to do. I was the one shooting after receiving the gun from Songee and after a while, I had a feeling that I was slowly getting better at shooting as well. 

Taking a short break, I refilled the gun with blood.

Something I noticed just today was that we did not need to use our own blood to fill up the magazine of the pistol. The entire TV Station was filled with corpses and that was more than enough blood for us to use.

“Oh wow! Isn’t that—”

— Bang!

“…”

“Elen–”

— Bang!

“…”

It might be because we were in the TV Station, but there were a few people here and there who recognised Elena, but that didn’t mean anything. They weren’t real people anyway and in fact, they were even more dangerous than the rest of the crowd because they might approach us after realising who she was.

We had no other choice than to kill everyone on sight as we proceeded forward. Elena seemed startled and flinched at times but she didn’t stop me either.

The people were no longer a problem because we just had to kill every one of them, but where exactly were we supposed to go?

“Miss Elena. Do you know some places around ABS that might be important?”

“Instead of what I already know about this place, I think what you discovered before would be a bigger hint, Kain-ssi.”

“What I discovered before?”

“Weren’t there ‘warnings’ on the guard house in the basement? Maybe there’s something similar here.”

Warnings, huh. Would there be some above ground as well?

…Now that I think about it, who exactly is it that created those ‘warnings’?

Climbing the stairs, we headed to the offices on the 2nd floor. Most of them must have come down, wondering what the commotion was about, and died downstairs already – there was no-one in the office.

Walking inside, I found a laminated piece of paper stuck on the wall that outlined all the ‘warnings’ as Elena guessed.

1. You must only press 1 floor at a time inside the elevator.

2. There are no floors in between the 4th and the 5th floors. Do not go into unidentified floors and keep going down.

3. Always knock on the door of the toilets on the 6th floor before going in.

4. You must never go to the roof.

“There really are warnings for the upper floors as well. Let’s break them one by one like I did last time.”

I was about to turn around, but was stopped by Songee. She said after holding onto my arm.

“Kain-oppa.”

“Nn?”

“There’s no reason for us to be the ones breaking the rules, right? Didn’t you say there was a monster when you turned around at the stairs? There might be something similar here.”

Hearing that, I understood what she was trying to say. I was alone when I was exploring the basement but we had a few other staff members nearby right now.

There would be no reason for us to put ourselves in danger, right?

Elena added.

“Songee’s right! There are a lot of cameras here as well, so let’s ‘ask’ one of the workers here to break the rules while carrying a camera. We can sync it to the tablet and watch what’s going on.”

…Elena, who used to flinch when I killed all the workers on sight, was long gone and now, she was suggesting that we give a camera to a worker to die in our stead.

But it sounded like a good idea.

After working on it for about 30 minutes, we successfully managed to link cameras to one of the tablets inside the office.

Now, all we had to do was look for someone that would put themselves in danger for us. 

“What should we do? Should we threaten them with a gun?”

“Oppa. I don’t think that would work in a world where they laugh off murder.”

“Let me try.”

Elena led us all the way up to the 4th floor. As expected of someone who had been to ABS several times, unlike Songee and I, she was unhesitant at moving to and from places.

The commotion on the 1st floor didn’t seem to have reached the 4th floor. There were a bunch of people on the floor but… was I supposed to kill random people? How were we going to decide who to assign the task to?

“Kain-ssi. Please shoot everyone except for the ones I point out. You can shoot the ones that are in front of us right now.”

There were about 4 people near us who soon stopped breathing.

It was nothing new, but it really was surreal how the other people were just watching their colleagues die with intrigue in their eyes.

That was when Elena held me back by the arm.

“Don’t shoot the one that’s coming out right now. Songee?”

“Yes?”

“Can you give me the mental protection thing right now?”

The bracelet flickered, after which Elena stepped forward to chat with the man who appeared in front of us.

In just 3 seconds after they started talking with each other, I realised something. Judging from the nature of the conversation, it seemed that he…

Let’s stop there. Unfortunately, impossible and unrequited loves were very commonplace.

I wasn’t sure what exactly Elena said to him, but the man followed us from behind without concealing the excitement on his face. 

After reaching the corridor, Elena installed the camera on his neck.

“Then, Jinwook-ssi! Can you please go to the elevator?”

“Of course. By the way, Elena? May I please ask what it is that you have prepared?”

“Oh! It won’t be fun to reveal that from the start, right?”

What she prepared was probably a bullet train to hell for him though.

“Uhaha! That was stupid of me to ask that!”

When the man walked into the elevator by himself, we decided to test out the 1st warning, ‘You must only press 1 floor at a time inside the elevator.’

“Jinwook-ssi! Then can you please press the 3rd floor and the 4th floor together?”

As soon as Elena said that,

The man froze.

…

“Jinwook-ssi?”

“WhatAreYouTalkingAboutHaveYouNotHeardWhatSirSaidInTheElevatorYouMustNot—”

He suddenly started pouring words out without even taking a breath. ‘Sir’?

“Oh right. I assume you are not aware of the warnings of the TV Station, Miss Elena. You see, you can’t press 2 floors inside the elevator. Ever. Sir strongly prohibited it.”

“Jinwook-ssi. Who is this ‘sir’ that you have been talking about?”

…

Instead of replying to her question, the man started trembling like crazy. Then, he ripped his clothes apart and raced out of the elevator like a madman.

— Bang!

It appeared that we had touched on something prohibited.

Songee broke the silence with a question.

“Elena-unni. Is there someone else that you can lure out?”

“There are quite a lot, but I think the workers here have some kind of restriction that makes it impossible for them to break the rules though.”

“Just bring someone. This time, I will trick them.”

Going through a similar process, Elena brought another man.

…How many workers of this TV Station had Elena enchanted? I heard she had been an aspiring actress and from the looks of things, she probably would have become very famous if she had stayed in the real world.

This time, we didn’t even talk about anything remotely close to breaking the rules.

We simply told the man to walk into the elevator after we pressed one of the floors beforehand, and due to the influence of the bracelet, the man pressed another floor without any hesitation.

Immediately after the doors of the elevator came to a close, we turned to the tablet to watch what was going on.

…The inside of the elevator was pitch black. All the lights had been turned off.

After seemingly realising what was going on, the staff suddenly fell on his knees and started to wail.

“S, s, sorry! Sir! Director! I’m sorry. It was a mistake! This stupid fool made a mistake!”

Suddenly, the man then started bashing himself on the walls of the elevator. 

In the blink of an eye, the camera broke. Right before we lost connection, we spotted several white things appearing from the doors of the elevator.

…

“Shall we give that another go?”

“Let’s try it with a different person. And this time, let’s change the location of the camera.”

We continued looking at what would happen when we went against the warnings.

*

1. You must only press 1 floor at a time inside the elevator.

“Looks like it stops at a place filled with monster nurses, right?”

“From the video, I can see a few other rooms in the distance. Besides, the monsters are taking the workers somewhere instead of killing them.”

“I wonder what they do to them after taking them somewhere else?”

“…”

*

2. There are no floors in between the 4th and the 5th floors. Do not go into unidentified floors and keep going down.

“This one is really weird. Nothing happens at first when they just go up and down, but…”

“An empty floor appears in the middle after going up and down twice.”

“What is with this empty floor? Do you know anything about it, Miss Elena?”

“It’s certain that this doesn’t exist in this TV Station.”

“Maybe this is a part of the ‘hospital’?”

“How strange. It’s big but there’s nothing. And for some reason, the man’s just crying on his knees as if he’s sorry.”

“Wait. What is that? That thing on top right!”

“It’s a very big eyeball.”

…

A large eyeball was looking at ‘us’. Not at the worker; but at the camera.

…

It was incredibly unpleasant so I immediately deactivated the link with that camera.

“…It’s becoming more and more strange as we go.”

“Let’s go to the next one, oppa.”

*

3. Always knock on the door of the toilets on the 6th floor before going in.

“Ah, fu*k! Oops, sorry. That scared me.”

“It’s eating his arm?”

“It’s amazing that you can watch something that horrendous like it’s nothing, Miss Elena.”

“It just feels like a movie since we’re watching it on a tablet.”

“Knock on the cubicle of the toilet and a normal person walks out, but you get a human-eating monster when you open the door without knocking. Let’s keep that in mind. Oppa, let’s move on to the last one.”

*

4. You must never go to the roof.

“Songee?”

“Wait.”

…

“Is it not working?”

…

It was strange. Until now, Songee had been moving people around with the bracelet like it was nothing, but she was having trouble with sending them to the rooftop.

No matter what she did, the workers with a camera on their necks simply wandered around the door to the rooftop without even attempting to open it.

“This is weird,” she said.

“What does it feel like?”

“It feels like they just can’t even perceive the door to the rooftop. I remember this feeling…”

“Does it seem familiar?”

“There was a time when I was trying to use the bracelet on you, Elena-unni, when you were under the control of an ‘Athanasia’ but I just couldn’t do anything. This feels exactly the same as that.”

“So what did you do to me in the end?”

“…”

Songee didn’t reply. Why was Elena asking something like that?

“I sort of understand what’s going on,” I said. “So like how the Athanasia was controlling us and overpowering Songee, there seems to be a stronger force stopping them from heading to the rooftop, right?”

“What do we do?”

“The fact that they are being that secretive makes me think there’s something very important there. Let’s go ourselves.”

In the end, we decided to directly go to the roof after killing the workers wandering around the door.

…

The three of us paused for a bit before the door.

Even though we didn’t say anything to each other, we all had a rough idea of what was going to happen. 

We could still vividly remember what happened when we went against the previous warnings.

The worker that pressed 2 floors at once was dragged by monster nurses into the hellish hospital.

The man who walked into the floor between the 4th and the 5th floors crumbled onto his knees after witnessing the large eyeball.

The person who entered the toilet on the 6th floor without knocking was eaten alive.

…

It was unquestionable that the door to the rooftop would lead to a similarly horrifying location. And we had to walk into that place on our own feet. 

“Kain-ssi.”

“Yes.”

“After we go in, if you think we are going to die…”

“…I will let you guys die in peace. If possible, it would be good for all three of us to die with a bullet each.”

“Please do that to me as well, oppa.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s going to be harder for us to go in at this rate. Let’s just go in.”

Like that, after encouraging each other and hoping that we would get killed by a gun if possible, 

We opened the door and walked forward.