Escaping the Mystery Hotel Chapter 84

『Translator: RainTL』

  ༺ Party Time (6), Timeless Safari, Secrets of Room 103 (1) ༻

– Cha Jinchul

This was my first time using an Inheritance. How strong would it be? I wondered.

Of course, I did experience its power inside ‘Common Sense Renovating Media’, but I heard it already from Songee that the power of the Inheritance changed when using it for ourselves. She mentioned how even her Bracelet lost several of its features that had been available inside Room 103.

I assumed it would be the same for the Star Fragment of Another World. It was highly unlikely that it would have the same power it did inside Room 101, and be able to affect the entire world. 

The only way to tell how powerful it was was to check it myself in this ‘training place’ that the Hotel had prepared for us.

After receiving mental protection from Songee’s bracelet, I entered Safari.

?

??

Did I see it wrong? 74 million years ago?

I dropped onto the ground before I could make sense of anything.

While swearing out loud to myself, I stood up and… the moment I looked around, my heart started to pound.

Mansion-sized pterodactyls were flying in the sky; enormous animals were visible even in the far horizon, and all around me were weird-looking plants that I had never seen before.

I was greatly moved by the scenery, which happened for the first time after our arrival at the Hotel.

When was it that I watched Jurassic Park in the movies?

A tyrannosaurus crunching through a bathroom and the people inside it; scholars arriving at Isla Nubla for the first time and being baffled by the sheer size of the brachiosaurus.

As well as how the CEO of the park welcomed them to Jurassic Park.

Right now, it felt like I had become one of those scholars.

Seeing all the miracles around me, my body shivered from excitement.

This scene right now – if we could sell tickets of the Safari which was filled with these extinct dinosaurs…

We could probably sell each ticket for hundreds of thousands of dollars and still be sold out. I was sure that there were plenty of rich people in the world that would be willing to spend that much to see an actual dinosaur.

Forgetting why I even came into this place, I walked across the plain, feeling the ancient Earth with my entire body. I took my shoes off and felt directly the mysterious plants under my feet that felt like both grass and moss.

Absent-mindedly I turned around to view the gigantic animals filling the skies and the earth, and constantly took deep breaths of the ancient air.

I was certain that I would never be able to forget this place.

Even if I were to eventually leave the Hotel, I would probably never be able to forget this. Ah! Only if I had a camera with me!

Let’s ask noonim straight away after I leave this place and ask her to buy a camera through HP Market.

I decided to visit this place again tomorrow with a camera. We had enough purchase limits anyway, because of how hard it was to come up with good things to buy.

Everyone would definitely agree to buy a camera if it was to take pictures of dinosaurs, right?

Like that, I roamed around like a tourist in the Dinosaur Era and experienced the primal ancient Earth for about 5 minutes. 

That was when a horrendous sound reached my ears.

— Grrrkk!

Hearing that, I lowered my eyes and looked around. What I found was a large bird. It wasn’t a dinosaur, but to be fair, I heard dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds, so maybe differentiating the two didn’t even mean anything.

The bird, whose head was already bigger than my body, let out an intimidating shriek to threaten me.

Did this bird, with nothing but size, that wasn’t even a demon nor an evil monster that messed with your mind, dare try to threaten me with a growl?

Without even taking out the Star Fragment of Another World, I just ran up to it and smacked its beak.

– Kieek! Kinng!

One punch was all it took to send the bird rolling on the ground. After letting out a cute groan that didn’t suit its appearance, it immediately started to run away.

However, there were more coming.

Turning around, I found several lizards with hundreds of teeth, that gathered behind me by the time I realized it.

— Thump! Thump!

The ground started to shake. It seemed that something incredibly enormous that could shake the ground with each of its steps was roaming around me somewhere. 

I decided to stop acting like a tourist.

Tomorrow, I definitely had to bring a camera to take a bunch of pictures, but that wasn’t my goal today. My goal today was to test the Inheritance, ‘Star Fragment of Another World’.

Besides, there was also the time limit of the mental protection that Songee had cast on me with her bracelet. I was so deeply moved by the dinosaurs that I ended up wasting 5 minutes of it.

Taking in a deep breath, I reached out to the air.

Unlike the Bracelet, Star Fragment of Another World was one that destroyed everything around it just through its presence. 

Perhaps it was the mindfulness of the Hotel, but thankfully, the Star Fragment did not exist physically 24/7.

It usually existed elsewhere like another dimension, and only descended onto this world when the owner wanted it to.

I reached out with my palm facing the sky and — the Star Fragment of Another World came down onto my hand.

*

My image of the Star Fragment in a nutshell was ‘radiation’ – a tool of destruction that endlessly pumped out waves that distorted and crushed everything regardless of foe or ally!

As expected, the surroundings started to warp the moment I took out the Star.

Mysterious crystals immediately budded from the ground beneath. The claws and eyes of the lizards around me popped up in other areas of their body as they suddenly went through a drastic change.

Without even daring to move, every creature around me trembled on the spot in fear and pain.

All that took less than 5 seconds after I took out the Star.

Every animal within the radius of dozens of meters rolled on the ground, and groaning was the only thing they could do.

Grabbing onto the Star, I raced out onto the plains.

I was like the Minister of Death and a Horseman of the Apocalypse.

Every step I took created a strange stone underneath my trail, and the air started to smell funny. The color around me started to warp to a color beyond my descriptive ability.

Whether it be animals or dinosaurs, everything that was a few dozen meters around me crumbled in pain. Large ostrich-looking creatures got bisected head-down, and the wings of a pterodactyl flying at me suddenly gave birth to claws as it fell down from the sky. 

After running endlessly, I came across a theropod, whose every step had been trembling the earth for a while.

That unbelievably beautiful creature was feeding on the greenery around it. 

By now, all the large birds and lizards that had been threatening me were all dead. That large dinosaur, on the other hand, had never threatened me and instead had been feeding itself until the very end…

I felt very guilty all of a sudden, that I had to harm such a creature just to test the power of the Star. It felt unpleasant, like I was trampling on the sacred and ancient world.

However, I soon decided to drop that line of thought. I had to hurry up because my teammates must be waiting for me outside.

Carrying the Star, I approached the large dinosaur while keeping the distance in mind.

When we were around 30 meters or so apart, the dinosaur started to groan in pain.

Was this the range of the Star? Or maybe it was bigger but the dinosaur was only now starting to groan? I couldn’t tell from this one example.

Running closer, I approached the dinosaur as the power of the star began to morph the creature’s body in full blow.

Its body started to contort; horns shot out of its back and its legs separated into smaller legs.

– UWOOOO!

I might be oblivious to the language of dinosaurs, but not to the point that I could not tell how that growl was one full of pain and suffering. 

The large creature, who had been tall enough to reach the sky, fell on the ground in a distorted shape like a random scribble of an evil artist. 

That horrifying scenery was quite a shock to my heart.

It was around then that I started to find it unbearable myself.

I turned to my right arm and the Star.

At this point, I could no longer call this an arm. It looked more like the Star being embedded into a large chunk of flesh.

The change that began from the right arm crept up all the way to my shoulder. The only reason I wasn’t finding it painful despite that was probably thanks to Songee’s mental protection. 

It was a shocking change but was also surprising in a different way. 

Even that enormous dinosaur just from the sheer approach of the Star went through an extreme change and crumbled without even lasting 30 seconds. And yet meanwhile, even though I was directly holding onto it with my own hand, the change was still limited to my right shoulder.

As Grandpa Mooksung said, it seemed that my body was strongly resistant to the effects of the star fragment. If only I had a bit of this strong resistance to my mind as well…

I had been wearing a watch to calculate how much time of Songee’s blessing I had left, but the watch was already no longer looking like a watch, due to having no resistance.

I was slowly reaching my limit as well.

Just by thinking it to myself, I sent the star fragment back to its dimension. 

Looking around, I could once again tell just how fiendish the power of the star was. Not a single creature was intact. Animals, plants and even the earth and the air had been twisted and changed.

…To the creatures of this world, I was probably like a demon from hell.

Let’s not empathize too much with the creatures of the Safari though.

Having such a destructive means in our hands was in turn a sign that our chance of survival in this Hotel had gone up!

— Rip!

— Trod!

I heard some weird noises from my arm, which I couldn’t even feel anymore, so I turned to it and found the distorted pieces of flesh falling off. Like scales, the skin came off along with the eyeballs, tongues, claws and teeth that had grown on my arm. 

When all those warped pieces of flesh fell off, I no longer had a right arm. However, it was unusable anyway because of the power of the Star, and it in fact felt better to have it gone. 

This was probably the power of ‘Regeneration’, and I understood what it meant when my sponsor said it would be helpful when using the Inheritance.

‘Regeneration’ wasn’t powerful enough to resprout a torn-out limb like a lizard. However, it had the power to drop off parts of the body that was polluted by the star fragment and seal the wound.

Songee’s ‘blessing’ was going to end some time soon.

It must be thanks to her Bracelet, that I couldn’t feel much pain despite my body being in this state. She said 10 minutes was the time limit at the start, but I felt like that was getting longer every time. Was she getting better at it maybe?

In any case, I decided to leave before the mental protection was fully gone, because I was sure I would be flooded with intense pain the moment that happened. 

How do we leave this Safari though? We should be able to leave when we want to, right?

Was there like a screen somewhere?

I just tried yelling out loud.

“Hey! I want to leave! Let me go!”

That was the right call to make.

As soon as I yelled out, my mind and my body started to float to the sky.

— Kung!

The moment I came to myself, I was already outside Safari, and it felt just like how it did when leaving a Cursed Room. 

Looking around, I found my teammates.

Ah! I immediately remembered the holy and large bodies of the dinosaurs! What a shame it was! When would I ever be able to lay my eyes on those again? We had to get a camera before anything.

“Aiya~! I didn’t even imagine there would be such a wonderful place inside the Hotel! Have you had fun looking around!

There were so many dinosaurs! What did everyone see?

We should come to Safari everyday for the remainder of the Party Time! And we really need a camera to—”

“Jinchul. Shut up for a moment.”

In the middle of my excited outburst, I heard Eunsol-noonim’s exhausted voice and finally observed everyone’s faces in surprise.

What was wrong? We had been to such a wonderful place so what was wrong with their reactions? Unlike me, they all looked extremely fatigued and tired!

Kain, who had been blankly looking into the distance, broke the silence.

“Looks like you enjoyed it a lot, hyung. It’s fortunate that at least one of us seems to have enjoyed it. I died 5 seconds in by a tail so I can’t say much.”

Songee added.

“How lucky that you died in 5 seconds, Kain-oppa. I was being chased around by ancient cannibals for hours.”

Wait. What was with this atmosphere?

“Why did you go through all that? You can just yell out that you want to leave if you don’t like it, right? They let you out immediately.”

Everyone turned around and looked at me.

Sir sighed out loud.

“Was that the way to leave? Just yelling it out loud? Haa… I didn’t even think about that, and continued running around before I got bit to death.”

It appeared that I was the only one here who wanted to come to Safari everyday.

*

– Han Kain

I felt like sighing looking at Jinchul-hyung, the only one who had a fun time inside. But sure, thank goodness that at least one of us has enjoyed it.

Besides, this place was for us to test how to use the Inheritance, so it worked out that Jinchul-hyung was fond of it. He can come here by himself and train everyday.

Hearing him talk about the power of the star fragment from the side, I suddenly thought about something else.

A tool on the same rank as the Star Fragment, ‘Diverse Perspectives’.

Songee had to practically work by herself for the Bracelet.

…What in the world was Room 103? Now that we resolved the curse of Room 101, I felt curious yet again.

Everyone started by seeing an illusion of an Animal Farm. Plus, it had a ‘time limit’ with the necklace around our necks sucking out our intellect and soul.

These conditions sounded horrible already, and yet there were plenty of Athanasias that human armies couldn’t even contend against, and was set on a flying spaceship.

How in the world did she solve it through all those hardships? Besides, was it even possible to clear it without ‘Affinity’?

What were the conditions for an escape?

I wanted to ask Songee and clear up some of those questions.