Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 152

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 151: Entering the Second Floor

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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 80

Current Location: Level 1, Corridor

Sage’s Advice: 3]

- Han Ga-in

Just as expected, the hotel announced that the second floor had opened.

We were calmly reading the notice when we froze at the last line.

‘The second floor is poorly heated. Please note that it may be somewhat cold.’

...

The moment I looked up, I saw people already letting out hollow laughs or clutching the backs of their necks.

“When the hotel says it might be ‘somewhat’ cold, how cold are we talking?”

Grandpa Mook-seong spoke in an exasperated tone.

“Those dumbass bastards would call Antarctica mild weather, wouldn’t they? Of course, it’ll be cold enough to freeze us to death if we just go in!”

Naturally, everyone looked at Eun-sol. Her face had gone pale.

“Don’t look at me! I’ve used up all my HP Market purchase slots! I didn’t buy anything weird. The hotel never gave us this warning in advance. I filled my bag with necessary consumables!”

“Calm down. No one’s blaming you. When do your slots refresh?”

“Three more days. And now that the vacation’s over, if we wait here for three days, the hotel will throw all kinds of bullshit at us!”

Amid the frantic atmosphere, Grandpa’s calm voice cut through.

“Calm down, all of you. If they’re going to play dirty like this, we can respond by being awful customers.”

Awful customers? What did he mean? I turned to Grandpa Mook-seong.

He was eyeing the hotel’s lavishly decorated curtains.

The moment I saw that, I understood what he had in mind.

“Everyone, grab blankets or something from your rooms! Let’s make temporary cold-weather gear out of the hotel’s furnishings before we go up!”

Everyone quickly scattered through the hotel. Some headed for the front desk or entrance to tear down fabric, while others went to Room 105 for blankets. Someone seemed to be gathering tablecloths.

I joined in too, tearing fabric from various parts of the hotel and being an awful customer. Honestly, I didn’t feel guilty at all.

Nearly thirty minutes later, a huge pile of soft fabric taller than a person was stacked in front of the elevator.

We roughly assembled it with knives, scissors, tape, and whatever else we had, creating something that resembled temporary winter clothes.

Compared to actual cold-weather gear, it was heavier, far more uncomfortable, and ridiculous-looking, but it was warm enough, so I figured it would do.

Everyone got into the elevator wearing their absurd outfits.

This was really it. We were finally moving on to the next stage.

After looking each other over, laughing, and fooling around for a moment, Eun-sol pressed the button for the second floor.

--- Whirr! Whirr! Ding!

[Current Location: Level 1, Corridor] -> [Current Location: Level 2, Corridor]

It had been 80 days since arriving at the hotel.

We had finally reached the second floor.

* * *

How should we interpret the words the hotel uses?

My view was similar to Grandpa Mook-seong’s. The hotel’s expressions needed to be interpreted on a cosmic scale.

They said the average temperature of the universe was minus 270 degrees Celsius, close to absolute zero.

At the same time, there were countless stars with surface temperatures over 5,000 degrees.

From that perspective, the hotel’s “somewhat cold weather” could include Antarctica at minus 50 degrees, while “somewhat warm water” could include lava over 1,000 degrees.

--- Whoooom!

The instant the elevator doors opened, an unimaginable cold that seemed capable of freezing us alive rushed in!

We froze without taking a single step out of the elevator, caught in a brutally cold wind that felt as though it could tear our skin apart.

This was supposed to be a hotel, yet a blizzard was raging before our eyes!

Eun-sol, stunned, hurriedly shut the elevator doors.

The moment they closed, everyone’s anger erupted.

“Are they seriously insane?”

“What hotel has snow falling indoors? This isn’t a heating problem!”

“We’ll freeze to death before we even reach a Curse Room!”

“I think I can manage.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to that man, Jin-cheol.

Unlike the rest of us, his expression had barely changed.

Had the strength of his blessing grown enough to give him resistance to the cold?

Jin-cheol spoke again in the same calm tone.

“By my standards, it’s just fairly cold winter weather. I’m more surprised at how strongly the rest of you reacted.”

“I’m fine too!”

“Seung-yeop, you’re wearing a Protective Suit. Of course you’re fine. Be quiet.”

“Yes...”

“Let’s go back to the first floor and talk it over.”

After returning to the first floor, we made another plan. The makeshift winter gear definitely helped, but it wasn’t enough to endure that cold for long. I didn’t think we could last even an hour.

Jin-cheol spoke again.

“The rest of you stay down here. Ga-in and I will go up and scout. Ga-in, wear the Protective Suit.”

“Right! Ga-in has Sage’s Advice, so we need him for scouting.”

A-ri immediately shoved me toward Jin-cheol.

A little later, I put on the Protective Suit and headed back to the second floor with Jin-cheol.

* * *

“It really doesn’t feel cold at all when I wear this.”

“What?”

“I’m. Not. Cold. Because. I’m. Wearing. This!”

“What?”

Hopeless. I gave up on talking and started walking.

Less than a minute after leaving the elevator, the blizzard’s deafening noise completely drowned out any conversation between Jin-cheol and me.

Even communication through the Chat Window was impossible. Was it because Grandpa Mook-seong was on the first floor? The physical distance didn’t seem that great.

I didn’t know. This was a hotel where there was more I didn’t know than I did, so there was no point dwelling on it now.

Scouting the second floor wasn’t easy at all. The Protective Suit completely blocked out the cold, but it did nothing to stop the blizzard from obscuring our vision or hindering our movement.

I could barely see an inch ahead. It felt like I was searching with my hands rather than my eyes.

Perhaps afraid we would get lost, Jin-cheol kept holding onto the back of my Protective Suit and following me.

There were a few things I could tell.

First, the second floor was enormous. It was definitely much larger than the first floor. It was broader too, and so much taller that it was hard to compare.

I couldn’t see the ceiling at all. I couldn’t even tell where the snow was coming from.

About ten minutes into our search, my hand, moving along the wall, caught on something with a tap.

When I brought my helmet close to the spot, I saw the number 201 behind a massive sheet of ice.

We had finally found the first room on the second floor. I gestured for Jin-cheol to come over to the ice.

He understood. At first, he tried to tear the ice away with his hands, but when it proved too difficult, he pushed me behind him and briefly summoned Star to make the ice disappear.

We had found a room, so that was enough scouting for now. We could barely see, and if we kept moving, we were bound to get lost.

Would it be better if Eun-sol, with her powerful eye, wore the Protective Suit and scouted?

On our way back to the elevator, I got frustrated and angry, so I used Sage’s Advice.

[Sage’s Advice: 3 -> 2]

‘You crazy bird bastard! Is the second floor going to stay like this?’

[Be respectful. The second floor requires repairs.]

Repairs. I hadn’t expected that word.

I considered using Sage’s Advice again but stopped myself. We might enter a Curse Room today. It seemed best to save my remaining uses.

Of course, I would probably be Sealed anyway, but you never knew. Someone else could be Sealed instead.

In any case, even by the hotel’s standards, the blizzard raging across the second floor didn’t seem normal.

After wandering around for a long time, we barely managed to return to the elevator.

* * *

The moment Jin-cheol and I came out, everyone rushed over.

Before answering, I handed the Protective Suit to Eun-sol and asked her to scout the area once more.

While she nodded and went up to the second floor, the others began asking questions.

“How was it?”

“Did you find anything?”

I told them what we had discovered.

The blizzard made it impossible to see clearly, the space was more expansive than we expected, Room 201’s location, and the “Repairs” mentioned by Sage’s Advice.

Jin-cheol, who had seemed to be mindlessly holding onto me and following, surprisingly gave a lengthy explanation too.

Though its meaning was unclear, the second floor was divided into several sections. I had thought they were simply frozen ice and passed them by, but apparently a number of walls had been set up to divide the space into sections.

Then Jin-cheol offered an opinion.

“Now that we’ve even heard the word ‘Repairs,’ I get it. The second floor’s current state is like a building that hasn’t been fully completed. It should originally have had multiple rooms, but construction wasn’t finished, so it’s only been roughly partitioned off. It also looks like it hasn’t been properly sealed off from the outside, which is why snow is getting in.”

Song-i muttered, dumbfounded.

“What kind of hotel brings in guests before it’s even finished...?”

“If it’s a hotel crawling with monsters and doors that lead to other worlds, it might summon guests before construction is finished too.”

Seung-yeop offered a somewhat different perspective.

“Repairs. If you put it in RPG terms, couldn’t this be tied to a kind of Repair Event? A hotel repair quest has appeared.”

I was dumbfounded too, so I added a word.

“The guests have to repair it? The hotel?”

Once I said it out loud, it somehow sounded plausible. This was the sort of place where that could happen.

A-ri sighed.

“Hey, hey! Let’s worry first about what we need to do today. This Repair Event or whatever is an issue, but our vacation ended yesterday. If we don’t enter a Curse Room today, the hotel will hold a special event for us.”

Grandpa Mook-seong gave his opinion as well.

“I think that Repair Event is something we should handle during Party Time. Unless we’re exempt from entering a Curse Room while we’re doing the event, but there hasn’t been any notice saying that.”

As we exchanged opinions for a while, Eun-sol returned.

What she had learned was largely similar to ours, but she added one strange detail.

“There’s no ceiling at all? You can see mountains beyond it?”

“I’m not sure. The blizzard was so strong that even my eye had its limits.”

Grandpa let out a deep sigh.

“It just keeps getting worse.”

Eun-sol looked around at us.

“Either way, we have to enter a Curse Room today. Do we go straight to Room 201, the one Ga-in found? If we all run as hard as we can to Room 201 in these ridiculous winter clothes, we’ll probably get there before freezing to death.”

I thought about it for a moment, but we had no other choice.

As Grandpa said, figuring out how to return the second floor to normal was probably something we had to do during a rest period.

The fact that we couldn’t find any other rooms, while Room 201 alone was located not far from the elevator, made that guess more convincing.

Maybe the hotel intended for us to clear Room 201 first, gain Party Time, then normalize the second floor during that period.

In the end, Seung-yeop, the most vulnerable of us, wore the Protective Suit. The rest wore temporary winter gear, then ran frantically to Room 201.

It took less than ten minutes, but even in that short time, it felt like ice blades were flying into my skin.

It was so cold that we didn’t even have the spare breath to encourage each other. Jin-cheol, running in front, immediately opened Room 201’s door.

* * *

[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 80

Current Location: Level 2, Room 201 (Curse Room - □ □□)

Sage’s Advice: 2]