Escaping the Mystery Hotel Chapter 83

『Translator: RainTL』

  ༺ Party Time (5), Checking Souvenirs, Entering Timeless Safari ༻

We were starving after hiking, so we only got to test the new tools after we were done with dinner.

My pen, noona’s badge and Grandpa’s glove.

The most straight-forward of them all was noona’s badge.

“Huh? S, she disappeared!”

“Hmm. I can still feel something, so it’s not like she physically vanished,” observed Grandpa Mooksung.

“Grandpa. Do you know where you are touching right now?”

“Oops! That wasn’t intentional,” he said as he quickly retreated back. 

The badge allowed her to become invisible. It was similar to how the Hotel always watched over us despite being nowhere to be seen.

She suddenly flickered even though she was still wearing the badge, and we figured out the precise conditions after a few more attempts. 

Holding her breath with the badge on were the conditions to activate her invisibility.

It looked like a very useful tool to everyone’s surprise.

Grandpa’s glove was also equally shocking.

“…”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“I myself can’t feel anything.”

As soon as he wore the glove, his hand started to float around the air. The place where his hand used to be was replaced by a hazy and bluish mist of light, and his hand wearing the glove flew around the room.

When he grabbed the hand in the middle of the air and took the glove off, his hand disappeared from that spot and reappeared at where it was supposed to be. 

“Looks like a remote control hand.”

“This is harder to control than I thought.”

He stated that it felt like his arm had become longer by several-fold, but it wasn’t a feeling we could understand just from hearing it.

“Does this work?”

Muttering that to himself, Grandpa picked up the gun with his remote hand!

That was pretty useful wasn’t it? He could shoot the gun from practically anywhere now.

— Bang!

…Unfortunately, the bullet flew in a completely different direction.

“Oops! This is very hard to aim. I would need to get used to this a lot more.”

Last of them all was my pen, which was slightly more questionable than the other tools.

‘A pen that could write anywhere.’

If I thought to myself, ‘I want to write on the air!’ then it allowed me to actually write on the air, and clicking the button at the back while thinking, ‘Erase it!’ removed the writing.

I could write it on the air, on my body, on paper and even on water. However, the letters I wrote on water disappeared along with the water when we let it flow away.

…How was I supposed to use this?

The two of them who did not receive anything looked at us with envy but as for myself, I wasn’t sure how exactly I was supposed to use this.

The fact that we could write on anything appeared to be the core use of this device. Maybe it would be helpful if we were in a situation where we couldn’t write anything the normal way?

I had trouble coming up with a proper way to make use of this.

We all agreed that we needed time to get used to our new tools. 

Eunsol-noona needed to practice holding her breath for extended periods of time, and Grandpa Mooksung had to practice his remote hand to the point that he could shoot a gun with it.

But what about me? Should I practice writing quickly?

No matter how I saw it, mine felt like the weirdest tool.

I was diligently writing letters on the air when noona noticed another characteristic of my pen.

“It looks like you’re writing from a distance,” she stated.

“Sorry?”

“Normally you would write from the tip of the pen right? But maybe it’s because you’re not writing with ink; it doesn’t look like it was written by a pen, and it’s slightly further away from the tip.”

Hearing that, I ran a few more tests and noticed that there really was a small gap. Besides, after realizing that, I also noticed that I could consciously write the letters at a distance. The maximum distance was about 1 meter.

…

Writing anywhere from a distance, huh. I finally thought of a way to use it offensively.

It was more useful than I initially thought.

All the tools had one thing in common.

No-one except for the owner was able to use it. When used by anyone else, my pen became a normal pen, Grandpa’s glove became a normal glove and noona’s badge didn’t have anything special either.

Their unique abilities were only usable in the hands of the designated owner.

Going to the Sanctum in the morning, hiking in the afternoon and checking the tools at night took quite a toll on our bodies. 

We went to sleep and that marked the end of the first day of our Party Time.

*

On the morning of the second day, we woke up with severe muscle pains and couldn’t do anything. 

We reproached Grandpa Mooksung every time we came across him, and in the end, he just didn’t even leave the room…

It was about time for lunch when the people, who empowered their blessings yesterday, started to get up. As soon as they were all up, we talked about the changes that happened to their blessings and the tools we gained while they were asleep.

“So Elena can detect lies, Jinchul-hyung gained regeneration, and Ahri’s blessing of Allusion became slightly stronger. Is that correct?” I said to sum everything up.

“Yes.”

“Yeah.”

“Un.”

“Can you detect lies all day long, Elena?” I asked.

“Not really. Actually, wouldn’t it be a very exhausting ability if that were the case? I think it’s limited to 10 minutes a day.”

“We are not going to a Cursed Room today anyway, so let’s test that now.”

As soon as I suggested that, her eyes started turning gold.

With everyone looking at her with intrigue, I started off first.

“I am 2 meters tall.”

Elena silently grinned in response.

Jinchul-hyung followed suit with a lie.

“I weigh 200 kg.”

This time, however, she tilted her head.

“What does it feel like? Does it hit you like a lightning bolt when you hear a lie?”

“I felt something while listening to the two of you. Here.”

Saying that, Elena gently grabbed onto the table.

…And the corner of the table was immediately crushed.

“It looks like it doesn’t just end after detecting a lie, and I gain the ‘power to punish’ for it.

Although I don’t feel like the active volcano that I feel like during an active ‘Enforcement’, I think I can throw one or two strong punches.

Do you want to try getting hit, Jinchul-ssi, to test your regeneration while we are at it?”

“…No thanks.”

Jinchul-hyung didn’t seem keen after seeing the table get crushed like that.

It was a more frightening ability than I assumed. We played around like that for 10 minutes or so until the golden light disappeared from her eyes.

“Shouldn’t we test your regeneration ability, hyung?” I suggested. “Maybe cut off a finger or two?”

“Do you even hear yourself right now, Kain? I don’t think regeneration is an ability that needs to be tested per se.”

Unfortunately, Jinchul-hyung and Ahri’s abilities were a bit difficult for us to test. Jinchul-hyung didn’t want to have his fingers cut to test regeneration, whereas we didn’t want to be a target of Allusion to test how much her hypnosis had improved by.

After a light test of our new abilities and tools, we decided on our next schedule.

It was one of the schedules mentioned by the Hotel in their announcement.

‘Timeless Safari’ to practice our Inheritance!

*

On the afternoon of the 2nd day of Party Time, the first thing we had to do was go to ‘Timeless Safari’ located in the basement.

What was it going to be about, I wondered.

I couldn’t make anything out of it just by hearing the name, and it was hard to understand why Safari was the best place to practice our Inheritance. 

We tried discussing it, but in the end, nothing was going to be certain until we tried it out.

Grandpa Mooksung led the way.

“Let’s go to Safari! Chatting here is not going to give us any answers, and we’ll see when we get there. I suppose it won’t be a dangerous place, considering how the Hotel recommended it for training.”

Really though?

Even the so-called ‘Hotel Land of Hope’ was a place where monster trucks tried to trample you to death from the get go though.

In any case, we started heading down towards the basement. On the way there, I wondered how many rooms there were in this basement.

The corridor appeared endless, and there was an endless array of rooms.

Besides, according to Grandpa Mooksung, who thoroughly explored the basement, it seemed that the structure of the basement changed every time we got here.

Today was no different.

When we reached the basement, while thinking of going to Safari, the first room we came to outside the stairs was none other than a room with the huge name, ‘Safari’ written on it.

I swear there was a different room here when we were hiking yesterday but…

Lingering on that topic sounded useless, so I immediately dropped that line of thought.

When we entered ‘Safari’, we were met with a large area resembling an amusement park.

A large kiosk machine was sitting at the entrance.

“How do we use this?”

“I think we need to get a ticket from here.”

We read through the explanation that was provided on the screen.

…

If you die inside? It might sound horrifying, but was pretty normal when applied to the Hotel. In fact, I was relieved to find the sentence, ‘You will revive outside,’ and that meant more to me than death.

“Seriously though. The Hotel is always so adamant about killing us wherever we go. Even this place explains what happens when you die.”

“Well, at least they revive us outside straight away.”

“Hey boar! Have you tried using your Star Fragment yet?”

“I do know how to summon it, but haven’t done it yet. How would I use it, when I know it’s going to destroy everything around me the moment I summon it?”

“Then now would be the best time to use it. Songee!”

Songee walked up to Jinchul-hyung with her sparkling bracelet.

“Let me use the Bracelet on you.”

Everyone took turns to press a few buttons on the kiosk screen to receive a ticket and headed to the entrance.

I slowly started to feel nervous.

Despite knowing that we would be simply sent outside if we die unlike the Cursed Rooms, I was still feeling quite nervous.

‘Timeless Safari’.

What exactly was the meaning behind this weird name?

Burying those thoughts in my mind, I walked in through the entrance.

*

– Han Kain

My body dropped onto the ground in the midst of my confusion.

What? 155 million years ago? What was this?

The moment I landed on the ground, I started looking around and realized that it must be nighttime from how dark it was all around.

Was this a wall? I fidgeted with the enormous wall in front of me and leaned on it while moving forward.

Maybe I should have brought a torchlight…

That was when the surroundings suddenly turned bright.

…

It was then that I realized something – it wasn’t dark because it was nighttime.

It was just that I was underneath something overwhelmingly gigantic. The moment the ‘large foot’, which I had been fidgeting with, lifted up from the earth, I frantically started to run away!

Seriously? A dinosaur?!

Something even bigger than a concrete pillar flew towards me at a rapid rate.

Where’s my warning! System window?

Actually, dying inside Safari didn’t mean anything, right? That must be why it wasn’t giving me any notifications and honestly, nothing would have changed even if I did get a warning beforehand.

— Kwang!

My body flew into the air as my consciousness started to fade.

…

Ah, that’s a brachiosaurus.

My first death in Safari was due to the infuriated tail sweep of a brachiosaurus.