WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 192: Party Time - The Secret of the Second Floor (1)
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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 94
Current Location: Frozen Hell - Resurrection Room
Sage’s Advice: 0]
- Han Ga-in
After listening to the drone's advice and returning to the second floor, we briefly checked on the companions who had gone back down to the first floor. The Prayer Team, who had gone through an even harder time than we had in some ways, had all gone into Room 105 and hadn't come back out. Grandfather tried calling them through the Chat Window, but Jin-cheol was the only one who responded. The rest seemed to be deeply asleep.
I wasn't sure whether that was fortunate or not, but according to the Companion Information in the Status Window, everyone was alive, so I wasn't too worried. Room 105 could save someone as long as they entered with a breath left in them, even if their limbs had been blown off. They'd come out all right somehow.
We decided to focus on exploring the second floor.
Then time passed without end.
Kim A-ri: Did anyone find anything?
Kim Mook-seong: Cold.
We found nothing. Absolutely nothing.
This wasn't even our first time searching. Not long ago, we'd explored with Eun-sol, who had acquired the Eye of the Monocular Giant Bird. Even someone with transcendent vision had searched herself half to death and barely found Frozen Hell without discovering anything else. It would've been stranger if something special suddenly appeared just because we searched on our own.
The sections that would probably become special rooms once construction was complete were nothing but sheets of ice for now. There was nothing around Room 201, the only room that had already formed. We opened Room 201's door, but the inside was just as empty as the outside.
We searched outside Frozen Hell too, the only place we'd found, but there was nothing there besides icy ground and a blizzard. At some point, Grandfather even began digging through the ground in search of ten-thousand-year snow ginseng, but it was pointless. We could search for long periods only because we periodically rested in Frozen Hell, where the room blocked out the cold outside. Otherwise, no one but me in my Protective Suit could have explored properly.
Around five in the afternoon, when dinner was getting close, we finally returned to Frozen Hell to rest. A-ri had arrived a little earlier, let out a sigh, and brought out hot coffee.
“Have some, everyone. No one found anything, right?”
“No... Could we really find something on our own in the first place?”
“I was thinking the same thing. If there were something we could find, Eun-sol, who had acquired superhuman vision, would have found it long ago. We're basically trying to find something with the naked eye that someone with a super-powerful telescope and magnifying glass couldn't find.”
“Did you find anything, Grandfather? You said you were looking for ginseng.”
“...”
“You didn't find it and eat it all by yourself, did you?”
Grandfather answered A-ri's unfunny joke with a deep sigh.
“Why is this blizzard still blowing in the first place...? Isn't this Hotel's setting completely arbitrary when you think about it? They said the resentment of the dead leaking out of Hell was the cause of the cold.”
“That's right.”
“But the room with the door to that Hell is pretty warm, and the snow is falling from the sky, unrelated to Hell! This damn second floor doesn't even have a ceiling! Will it get one after the repairs are finished?”
“Come to think of it, the setting really is a mess. The snow is falling from the sky, unrelated to Hell, while the area near Hell, the source of the cold, is warmer instead.”
As A-ri and Grandfather complained about the Hotel's nonsensical setting, a strange thought began to form in my mind.
The Hotel being arbitrary wasn't anything new, so there was no point dwelling on it. A normal hotel wouldn't invite guests into a place where construction wasn't even finished.
Things related to Frozen Hell, like Prayer for Rest and resurrection, had to be understood as something like game quests connected to the Hotel's internal progression. There was no need to obsess over the setting itself.
What if this nonsensical setting was a trap meant to hide something?
Forget the setting, which the Hotel had obviously made up however it pleased, and look at reality. What was the real reason the second floor had frozen over?
Wasn't it because the blizzard was raging outside?
...
--- I sprang to my feet!
“Ga-in? What are you doing?”
“The blizzard.”
“Huh?”
“How can a blizzard possibly be blowing?”
“What do you mean-”
“Outside the first-floor main entrance was the sky. And it was incredibly high up! The clouds were far below us. Where could we have been? It's hard to know exactly, but if the clouds were that far beneath us, we were probably near the top of the troposphere, right?”
“Uh... probably?”
“The Hotel is above the clouds. Snow forms in clouds. So how could a blizzard rage through a Hotel above the clouds, even if it doesn't have a ceiling?”
A-ri and Grandfather's mouths dropped open at the same time, and everyone's eyes turned toward the sky.
I recalled the “mountain” Eun-sol had discovered with the Eye of the Monocular Giant Bird when we first explored the second floor. I also remembered that we hadn't been able to use the Chat Window when Grandfather was on the first floor and we were on the second.
Why was that?
We had already confirmed the Chat Window's range limit through the Common Sense-Altering Media and the House of Horror. Its range was far broader than expected. It wouldn't be cut off just because we changed floors in the same building.
“Didn't Eun-sol say she found something beyond the second-floor ceiling that looked like a mountain? The second floor isn't in the same location as the first. Maybe!”
Maybe the second floor was on the ground.
* * *
Around five thirty, we went down to the first floor and called Jin-cheol out again. Grandfather reacted in an unusual way.
“Sorry for calling you out while you're resting. Things are a little urgent right now...”
Jin-cheol smiled faintly, as if Grandfather's trailing apology was absurd.
“Since when do you apologize? Tell me the reason.”
I explained the hints we'd received from the Owl and the drone, how we'd confirmed that the second floor was in a different location because of the blizzard pouring in through the ceiling, and my idea to go outside from the second floor.
“Wow! We've explored the second floor several times, and we knew there was no ceiling, but we never thought about breaking down a wall to get out. I figured we'd just fall to our deaths if we broke out, since the Hotel was in the sky.”
“We only realized it now too. Since the first floor was in the sky, we naturally assumed the entire Hotel was in the sky. Who would've thought the second floor was somewhere else?”
“How are you planning to get out? Break the wall? Come to think of it, Ga-in, you've smashed up the Hotel before, haven't you?”
“Yes. This Hotel's durability isn't any different from an ordinary building. It's worth trying to break through the wall.”
Of course, I couldn't break it with my bare fists unless I used Descent. Even with the superhuman strength granted by the Protective Suit, I couldn't break through a concrete building with that much force.
There was only one person among us who could smash apart a building through sheer strength.
* * *
Once we reached the second floor, things moved quickly.
Jin-cheol looked far more haggard than usual after praying in front of the Rest Incense Candle, but his strength hadn't diminished. At first, he considered using the Otherworldly Star Fragment's power, but after considering our safety and the limits of what he could endure, he decided to use the method from The Cube.
--- Bang! Bang!
... A-ri sounded impressed.
“It's amazing even the second time. Do you think the Hotel expected this when it gave us the Protective Suit? Who could've guessed someone would use a Protective Suit as an indestructible bludgeon?”
That made me curious, so I asked.
“Nothing like this happened during your first time in the Hotel?”
“No. Looking back, the second floor might have been in a different location back then too, but no one reached the same realization we did. Everyone naturally assumed the second floor was in the deep sea, so no one thought of breaking through the wall.”
It struck me again how difficult it was to consider that the first and second floors might physically exist in different spaces. It was something that couldn't happen in a building in the real world.
Since we could see outside through the transparent glass doors at the first-floor main entrance, it was easy to assume the entire Hotel was in the same location as the first floor. Just as we had naturally believed the whole Hotel was in the sky, A-ri's first group must have naturally believed the whole Hotel was in the deep sea.
There had been plenty of hints if we thought about it.
1. Beyond the second-floor ceiling was an object that looked like a mountain. There were very few mountains that could rise above the clouds, and even those only had their peaks above them. It would be difficult for a mountain to be somewhere we could look up at from a Hotel far above the clouds.
2. The first floor was in the sky above the clouds, yet snow formed from clouds was falling on the second floor.
3. In an ordinary building, the physical distance between the first and second floors would be less than ten meters. At that distance, the Chat Window couldn't possibly be blocked.
4. The second floor's horizontal expanse was vastly larger than the first floor's.
All of these hints pointed to the fact that the first and second floors were not physically connected as a single building. They were separate places formed in separate spaces.
“The fact that we moved between the first and second floors by elevator ended up encouraging our misunderstanding.”
“Since we traveled by elevator, we naturally thought we were going up.”
“Was this why the Owl used up Sage’s Advice to force us to pay attention to the different repair times?”
A-ri nodded.
“If the repairs had been completed and a ceiling had appeared, we never would've noticed. We wouldn't be able to see the mountain anymore, and the snow wouldn't come in, so many of the hints would disappear.”
“What do you think is outside the second floor?”
“Who knows... I hope there aren't any monsters. And.”
“And?”
“This might feel like I'm throwing cold water on things too early, but I don't think we can escape this way. It's just a feeling.”
--- Crash! Rumble!
A sound like thunder rang out, followed by the sound of something collapsing. Jin-cheol had finally demolished the wall with the Invincible Pickaxe and made an opening leading outside the second floor.
The outside wasn't much different from the second floor itself. The blizzard that had turned the second floor into Hell had to be coming from outside the Hotel. The tremendous snowfall and wind, sharp enough to feel like torture, made it difficult to even keep our eyes open.
But there was ground outside the second floor.
With our mouths hanging open and a strange sense of awe rising in us, we carefully stepped onto the ground outside the Hotel.
On the ninety-fourth day since entering Hotel Pioneer, we reached a space outside the Hotel for the first time.
Footnotes:
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