Escaping the Mystery Hotel

Chapter 197: Party Time – Growth, Preparation for the Next Room (1)

“...pay close attention to what i’m about to say—do not miss a single word.”

as soon as i heard the owl’s words, a tension so strong that it felt suffocating gripped me.

i focused all my attention on it.

“firstly, what happened this time exceeds the limits of wisdom. in the next cursed room, i won’t be able to give you any advice. the penalty starts today. secondly, the penalty applied to a room is determined the moment you enter it for the first time. choose your room carefully. thirdly–”

“...”

the owl stopped speaking after, “thirdly.”

its beak moved a few more times in front of me, but no sound reached my ears.

if it were a person, i might have been able to guess by reading its lips, but even a master of lip reading couldn’t decipher the movement of a beak.

with the owl silent, i looked around.

we were in a plain, white room.

just a moment ago, i had entered room 105 after an exhausting exploration and probably fallen asleep, so i figured this must be a dream.

the owl’s expression shifted.

even i could feel what that expression meant: frustration.

some unknown force was preventing the owl from communicating.

perhaps the force that trapped the owl in this cage also judged that the owl’s third message had crossed a line.

or perhaps, since i was being penalized, the content of the penalty was allowed to be conveyed, as the first two messages seemed related to the nature and application of the penalty.

but what could the third message have been about?

- clack!

suddenly, i could hear its words again.

“thirdly, i can sense your growth. it might be worth studying again.”

- clack!

after those words, an unknown noise echoed, and my consciousness began to fade.

even as i lost consciousness, i kept repeating the three messages over and over.

i would need to analyze their meaning as soon as i woke up.

***

user: han kain (wisdom)

date: day 95

current location: first floor, room 105 – room of rest

sage’s advice: x

when i woke up in the morning, the first thing i did was check my status window.

“...”

an x was displayed where the sage’s advice count usually appeared.

it was a symbol i had never seen before.

this must be the “penalty”.

the answer lay in the second message.

it would be determined the moment we first entered the next cursed room.

in other words, if we entered room 202, it would immediately be decided that we couldn’t use advice in room 202.

even if we escaped and proceeded to room 203 afterward, no penalty would be applied to room 203.

ahri, understanding this loophole, responded, “we’ll need to be very careful when choosing which room to enter next. honestly, it seems like we already have the answer—it’s room 104, isn’t it?”

“huh? what do you mean?”

songee, confused by ahri’s comment, asked for an explanation, “we can’t use kain’s advice in the next room, right? it feels risky to challenge one of the unknown rooms on the second floor.”

“oh! so, should we enter room 104 like you and ahri said? if i remember correctly, room 104 has a hint. it was something like, ‘it is natural for the _______ to ______ the father.’”

ahri replied, “you remember that? impressive memory. yeah, you’re right. we’ll talk more about it later, but it seems like room 104 is our best bet. it’s not ideal to enter one of the second floor rooms, which we know nothing about. i’ve also thought of a trick.”

i could immediately guess what that trick was.

“by ‘trick,’ do you mean we should check out room 104, and if things look hopeless, we’ll escape and try one of the second floor rooms?”

“exactly, if it looks bad, we can always use the escape button. once we escape, we can just forget about room 104, where advice is blocked. like i’ve said before, we don’t have to clear every single room.”

ahri had always treated room 104 as a “lost cause”.

she seemed to believe that because of the power of “descent”, which surpassed even an inheritance, room 104 could no longer be cleared normally.

this new penalty seemed to follow the same logic—one of the cursed rooms would be ruined by the inability to use advice.

i now understood ahri’s “real plan”—why she was suddenly so eager to re-enter room 104 after having avoided it for so long.

let’s dump the penalty in room 104, a “lost cause”, and just abandon it!

“...”

we still had time left on the rest day, so we could think about it a bit more.

at least it wasn’t a baseless plan.

grandpa, who had been silent, spoke up, “‘i can sense your growth. it might be worth studying again,’ what do you think that means? this place isn’t exactly ideal for studying.”

“i’ll explain the context of that statement. when the owl was about to say something, some unknown force silenced it. after a moment of silence, the owl said that line and our conversation ended.”

noona mumbled to herself with amusement, “so, it was a roundabout way of saying something.”

silence fell over the room again. grandpa finally spoke up, “let’s break it down. ‘i can sense your growth.’ it’s praise. however, it doesn’t seem like the owl would go out of its way just to give a compliment.”

“right, it already gave a simple compliment earlier...”

“what kind of ‘growth’ do you think it’s talking about? though... i have a hunch.”

“huh?”

when i looked up in confusion, i noticed that ahri seemed to have realized something as well.

“kain, have you ever heard of the term ‘soul rank’?”

“what?”

ahri muttered quietly.

“‘studying’ refers to something you do by reading a book. get your grimoire out.”