Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 273
Only Krnovel
Episode 273 – A time full of hardships.
[User: Han Ga-in (Jihye)
Date: Day 131
Current Location: Tier 1, Room 105 – Room of Rest
Sage Advice: 3]
– Han Ga-in
— Crunchy!
The mysterious sound coming from inside my mouth made me happy. This is the sound made when the crust with just the right texture, formed by the proper Maillard reaction on a properly grilled steak, breaks apart. As the tongue and teeth crossed the wall of crust, a sea of juice appeared.
The thick pink flesh of the beef was crushed into small pieces, and the hot meat juice moistened my tongue. After chewing and swallowing the piece carefully, I took a sip of the cola in my glass.
If the food is this good, my score is… .
‘I don’t know’ would be better. I think you have to eat it all day to truly appreciate the taste!
With his face down on the table, he cut steak, swallowed pork cutlet, and ate spaghetti, leaving the stateless table empty for a while.
It was lunch time, a little earlier than usual. As soon as we left the room of the curse, room 203, we moved to room 105 and ate together in silence for about 20 minutes.
Only then did my colleagues come to their senses and began to raise their heads one by one.
“Oh, it’s so delicious! “Has the hotel food always been this delicious?”
“I think I’ve never eaten such delicious food in my life. ah! I feel like crying… .”
No joke, Songi really started to sniffle.
“Eat this and pop!”
When Ari next to her handed her a spoonful of white rice, a piece of spam, and stir-fried kimchi, Songi took it and ate it while crying. Are we some kind of starving refugees?
Of course, while thinking this way, I was also struggling to put even one more piece of meat in my mouth, when the old man next to me nagged me to eat slowly so that the meat would not escape.
My older sister, who had been mindlessly inhaling bulgogi a little while ago, now seemed to have come to her senses and started talking calmly.
“When we were walking down the hallway, we wanted to talk about various things, but now that the food is in front of us, everyone loses their senses!”
“Eunsol, swallow the bulgogi you are chewing and speak.”
“You can’t do that. “You have to keep eating bulgogi without stopping.”
“no… . “What on earth happened to everyone to be in this mess?”
Ari, the only one who could not sympathize with this atmosphere at all, waved her hands as if she were the daughter of a noble family in an advanced country who had fallen among greedy people.
“Really, Ari, you had to go through this too! Do you know what the first meal I got as soon as I started in ‘Room 203’?”
“What was it?”
“larva! There really is no exaggeration whatsoever! “They brought a caterpillar on a leaf as a special treat!”
The grandfather snorted after hearing what his sister said.
“If it’s a caterpillar, isn’t it still meat? I was treated well. “I brought you a handful of nuts, which are worthless than acorns, as a meal.”
“I put tree bark and ants in water and boiled them… . “That’s the tribe’s traditional nutritional food.”
Mr. Sang-hyeon, who was listening, also added a word as if he could not bear it.
“But you all ate something. The tribe I was in just starved without any solution. “If this continued, we felt like we were going to eat each other, so I had to risk my life to get food first.”
“Eat it! Don’t say such scary things… . I’ve been through something really terrible. “I must tell you.”
“If you say it’s terrible, why do you even want to tell me?”
“I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t gone through it, but since I went through it, everyone must know!”
While Ari was gaping at Song-i’s absurd words, Song-i told a story that, as expected, made people laugh.
“I woke up on incredibly rough straw? “At first, I just woke up and looked around to see where I was, and then an old man came and congratulated me on waking up and suddenly brought me some hot meat.”
“meat?”
“At first, I didn’t know how to do it, so I said thank you and took about three bucks. But suddenly Pero flies in from outside and throws the plate. “I immediately felt something off.”
… I felt like I knew the identity of that meat.
“It turns out that those bastards roasted the wrist of a warrior who died while hunting and gave it to me! “Then he said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s still fresh and fine,’ so I almost fainted?”
This feeling.
The ‘I had a harder time’ contest continued for a while, with each person feeling this way. I didn’t even have a chance to open my mouth as so many bizarre stories poured out. As I listened, it was hard to say anything because ‘disgusting meat porridge with a musty smell’ seemed close to a sumptuous feast.
We are the ones who ate that kind of food for over 10 days. Other tribesmen were picking up and eating much more trash, so I couldn’t argue with anyone, so I just endured the feeling of throwing up half the time at every meal for over 10 days.
Then, this sumptuous meal was presented before my eyes. We all have no choice but to lose our minds.
At that time, Seung-yeop, who had just eaten five pork cutlets without saying a word, quietly raised his head. Immediately silence began to fill the surroundings.
‘Tough confrontation’. No matter how you look at it, what is this force that makes the preliminary winner of this miserable match raise his head?
“S-Seungyeop, come to think of it, how have you been? “Everyone was very worried about you.”
“very… . “I had a fun time.”
There is silence in the hall.
“If I think about it now, it didn’t seem like there was any particular respect for me from the beginning. Is it an atmosphere where you have to be good at dealing with a shaman? “There is a separate warrior leader who leads the tribe, and he told me to guess where there is water and food because the weather is getting cold.”
“dot?”
“They caught an armadillo-like creature, skinned it, put my blood on it, and then set the skin on fire. So the tribe moved after seeing the direction in which the shell split.”
“What on earth… . What kind of oracle bone script is this? Why are these true cavemen so creative?”
“But I got it wrong three or four times in a row. If the blessing had been fine, would you have guessed it? I don’t know that much. Anyway, every time they made a mistake, they took more and more of my blood and applied it.”
The story is already starting to get disgusting.
“Of course it was useless. When I applied my blood to a bowl or an armadillo shell, I thought I was really going to die like this. But that wasn’t the end.”
“Come to think of it… . “Elena said you were hanging from a ‘pole.’”
“The fourth ‘dot’ also failed. In fact, I still don’t know what sign those ignorant people read when they looked at that burnt armadillo shell. Was it day 4? Was it day 5? The result of the fourth point is that it takes almost a day’s walk to the northwest.”
“So they walked all day?”
“yes. After walking for a full day, we came across a wasteland without a drop of water, and by that time, some of the tribesmen, who were extremely exhausted, began to collapse and die.”
“… no way.”
“At that time, a warrior leader named ‘Wolf Running on the Plains’ declared. The ancestors were angry at the depravity, dullness, greed, and foolishness of the gods. “I have no choice but to appease that anger through the blood of a godman.”
“…”
“As I was hanging from the pole, the warriors disappeared somewhere to light a fire underneath. “This is a funny point, because it was such a barren wasteland that it was difficult to find kindling to start a fire, so it took a very long time to start a fire.”
Of course, no one laughed. Seungyeop suddenly stood up from the table.
“Right at that moment! An angel flew down from the sky and wiped out all the evil tribesmen and saved me. Of course, that angel was a little crazy!”
“… Be sure to tell Elena that story later. “It will definitely be of great help.”
“yes. But Elena doesn’t eat?”
Everyone’s expressions darkened when the story of Elena, our colleague who suffered a psychological shock that surpassed Seungyeop’s, came out. I never thought something like this would happen… .
After pushing her ominous imagination to its limit in the mountains, Elena slowly came to her senses as the cause of her madness disappeared, but she could not remember anything about the time when she lost consciousness. To be honest, she felt very fortunate. Because there are things she would rather not know.
However, once outside ‘Room 203’, everyone’s blessings were restored, and Myeonggyeongsu began to heal even such convenient oblivion. In the process of Elena’s mind being ‘really’ normalized, she realized the massacre she had committed and after standing there in a daze for a while, she went into her bedroom, saying she was going to sleep first.
I don’t know how to comfort you.
It might be a bit unethical, but I thought I just didn’t want to worry too much about it. When she escapes from her cursed room anyway, her evil deeds are virtually gone as well. If you go back in, the dead people will come back to life.
Also, strictly speaking, after ‘solving the room’, which is our final goal, all NPCs disappear. Considering that context, I don’t think the lives of NPCs can be considered equal to the lives of real humans.
Of course, this is ultimately my opinion and a problem that Elena will have to overcome.
In the end, we couldn’t even start a serious conversation about settling the room until lunch was over.
*
I walked down the hallway alone and thought deeply. First of all, the room number I checked after escaping was none other than room 203. If it were a coincidence, it couldn’t be anything but an unfortunate event.
The party was largely divided into two groups.
My brother Jin-cheol, the doctor, Grandpa Muk-seong, Elena and Seung-yeop joined the ‘mountain group’ and headed to the mountains, while my sister Eun-sol and Song-i discovered the traces of a strange creature in the sky and then found the shadow of that creature. It is said that he was chasing. For convenience, let’s call it ‘shadow wave’.
Among these, the one that succeeded in escaping was the ‘Shadow Wave’. It is said that after chasing the shadow for about 10 days, a sudden escape occurred and it came outside.
Absurdly, those who succeeded in escaping did not even understand ‘what’ or ‘why’ they had escaped. I just said that the escape appeared out of nowhere at a completely unexpected time.
However, the time when Escape emerged and the time when the ‘Mountain Sect’ was wiped out after meeting Ari, who was shooting rays from the mountain range, are similar. I was sure it wasn’t a coincidence.
It is clear that what we did in the mountain range had an effect on the escape of the shadow waves that were gradually moving away from the mountain range tens of kilometers out in the water. Of course, I don’t know what effect it had. and –
— Tuk!
“You’re thinking about it alone.”
“Oh, teacher?”
“I called you from behind, but there was no answer, so I apologized.”
“sorry.”
“no. Anyway, the job is not easy. I think we should have another meeting in the evening. “I’ve collected information from other people along the way, and I think it’s rare to not know what something is like this.”
“Iknow, right… .”
“Who will be the opponent? Could it be Miss Ari who appeared in the city? But, this is meaningless. Because they have no idea who is controlling Miss Ari. Even if you are a prisoner, there are times when you wake up even if you don’t know, so let’s say so. Room 203, what is the curse threatening that room?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course, the information we have discovered is considerable. I learned that beyond the mountains were the ruins of a fallen ancient civilization. I also learned that Miss Ari, whose body had been stolen by an evil being, was in that place. Also, Seung-yeop seems to have seen something strange at the end.”
Something interesting?
“Let’s talk later. However, I have one opinion. “I’m here to let you know in advance.”
“Opinion?”
The teacher, who looked somewhat tired, sighed.
“Let’s go to the next room first.”
“…”
“Room 203 is an absurdly difficult room, even considering it’s the first hotel I’ve ever stayed in.”
“It’s hard… .”
“Is room 203 particularly more dangerous than other rooms? Not really. In terms of risk, Room 202, where disaster struck within a day of entering, and Room 104, where prisoners ran rampant to eat us, were much worse. Compared to that, room 203 is very leisurely in terms of time. We have been staying in Room 203 for over ten days, and we do not know what the curse that threatens the world is. “What does this mean?”
“It means there are more than ten days left until the ‘curse’ strikes.”
“I think this room is more spacious than any other room in terms of time. However, in terms of ‘difficult’, it is the opposite. “On a psychological level, it is hell just because I was forcibly torn apart from a colleague I could trust and rely on.”
In Room 203, the entire hotel party must fight alone in different locations.
“I don’t need to tell you about the physical aspect, right? Let’s put aside all the empty talk about no cars and no air conditioning. Room 203 has no food for human consumption before that. “All water is just dirty water.”
“The more I say it, the more terrible it gets.”
“So I’m thinking of making a suggestion during the evening meeting. “Let’s go to the next room first.”
“…”
“I’m not saying to abandon Room 203 forever. Let’s start in a place where there is less physical and mental pain, and come back after recovering and building strength. As an expert in psychiatry, I can tell you that among us, Seung-yeop and Elena, who are in particularly bad condition, will start shaking just by looking at the number ‘203’ for a while.”
My head started spinning again. Would it be comfortable to go to the next room?
However, it is also true that No. 203 is overly difficult. Even when comparing rooms of curses, I first experienced the extreme environment of the primitive era that completely divided my colleagues in room 203. I felt like I needed to talk to everyone.