Chapter 13: Rest, Hotel Basement – ‘Living Pool’ (2) Fin
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 3
Current Location: Basement, Swimming Pool
Sage’s Advice: 3]
Twitch
Twitch
Suddenly, the floor began to sway. Did I step on something? Just as I was pondering this, screams and profanities filled the pool.
“Kyaaaaah!”
“What the hell is this?! What the hell!! Uaaah!!!”
Something bizarre was emerging, suddenly bursting forth as lips from the floor, walls, and ceiling. Those enormous lips looked like they had been ripped right off a giant’s face!
A tongue thick as an arm emerged from those lips. No, those couldn’t even be called tongues at this point; they were stretching and curling like something out of a nightmare!
I guess frogs do that when they eat flies…
The problem was that we were the flies!
Crash!
My balance snapped away in an instant.
In a panic, I glanced at my right leg, only to find a tongue that jolted up from the floor clutching my ankle. Startled, I flailed my legs and tried desperately to rip that disgusting tongue away with my hands, but it was utterly futile.
It felt like a thick rope was gripping my leg—no way I could move!
Bbbiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikkkk!
A sound too ridiculous to come from a human’s mouth reached my ears. What was that this time?
Turning toward the source of the sound, I saw the ‘lips’ contorted in pain, screaming like they were in agony. As expected, Jinchul-hyung was different from us; he had just ripped the tongue out, which was why those lips were howling!
It seemed that even that monster could feel pain just like a human tongue.
In a burst of raw strength, he tore away two more tongues, flinging them as though they were mere strands of spaghetti, and they no longer sought him out.
Jinchul-hyung then quickly darted around, and within a minute, Eunsol-noona, Seungyub, and I had regained our freedom.
However, this was merely the beginning.
“Gasp, gasp, huaack! Please, please, uaaah!!!”
At this awful moment, the two people still submerged in the water, Elena and Songee, were unable to surface. As I drew closer to the pool and peered inside, I was left speechless.
Lips. Enormous—gargantuan lips. They were absurdly large.
These were on an entirely different level than the lips that had emerged from the pool’s walls and floor.
By now, they were practically comparable to the mouth of a whale, and the tongue that emerged was leagues thicker than all the others. While the other tongues resembled thick arms, this one was the size of a person’s leg!
To make matters worse, there were now two tongues, not one.
Before I could even form a plan in my head, Jinchul-hyung had already rushed forward.
He’d sort it out somehow. Over the past few days, I’d repeatedly witnessed his absurd strength.
Even if he faced a tongue the size of a human leg, I figured that someone who could crush concrete with his fists would have no problem dealing with it.
Or so I thought, but reality took a wild turn away from my hopeful expectations.
“Ugh! Seriously, why is this bastard’s mouth so damn huge?! Kain!! Hurry up and pull with me!”
I sprinted forward in a daze. Jinchul-hyung was performing an acrobatic feat, pulling Elena with one arm and Songee with the other, but in a moment of distraction, he had to let go with one hand, and I exerted every ounce of strength to help pull Songee out.
While pulling her along, a thought struck me.
Sure, the tongue was strong, but it was still a tongue—not made of steel.
Even for me, it felt mushy, so shouldn’t Jinchul-hyung’s overwhelming strength mean he could snap that tongue off without breaking a sweat? I’d seen him yank small tongues apart like they were rotten ropes in just seconds, so I figured this bigger one wouldn’t be much different…
But as I got closer and began pulling Songee, I swiftly understood the issue at hand.
As the bizarre situation began, Songee and Elena had both tried to escape from the water, but it was too late, leaving most of their bodies submerged. Naturally, the tongues that had captured their ankles and were dragging them deeper were under the water too.
How could Jinchul-hyung, who was already struggling to stay afloat, dive deep enough to sever those tongues?
In fact, even if he were an Olympic swimmer, it would still be tricky.
No matter how powerful a person is, when underwater with nothing to hold onto, using your strength becomes nearly impossible unless you’ve got some anti-gravity secret!
Slowly but surely, Songee and I were being pulled deeper and deeper into the pool.
Creeeak!
The pool floor yawned open. Water was swirling chaotically as it was sucked into that monstrous mouth, and I felt an increasingly unbearable pressure mounting.
Ahh… that mouth! Look at that grotesque mouth! Inside, countless hideous teeth gleamed menacingly.
If I ended up in there, my death wouldn’t be gentle—it would be messy. Freezing to death in Room 101 seemed positively merciful in comparison to the horror of dying in that mouth.
As the pool floor opened wide, Songee’s wails mixed with screams ballooned to double their volume, drowning my ears.
Ting!
That was when something metallic clanged next to me.
A silver dagger.
It was the ornamental dagger I’d found in the hallway that morning before entering Room 101. I hadn’t gotten to use it there, but it’d been stuck to my side ever since.
It looked fancy and expensive, I’d daydreamed about brandishing it to show off even more, reminiscing on all the ridiculous antics Seungyub and Jinchul-hyung had pulled with that shiny piece of art—worth tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of won—tossed about like a common toy.
I heard Seungyub’s voice shouting something from a distance.
He must have dug it out from my clothes and thrown it to me!
I understood his intent, grabbed the dagger, and stabbed it into the tongue with everything I had.
This tongue was powerful, but it wasn’t made of steel, so surely it couldn’t withstand a blade!
Stab!
Just as I thought, the dagger sliced right into the tongue.
It had the texture of slicing through super stretchy meat. An overwhelming stench combined with a spray of blood erupted out.
Bbbbbiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiik!!!!!!
A thunderous scream erupted—so loud my ears were nearly blasted back to life—filling the entire pool and drowning out all other sounds.
Finally, Songee and I gained our freedom once again.
“Oppa, oppa! Thank—ptui—thank you! Cough, I mean!”
“Save that for later and catch your breath.”
“You should keep that for later too! Now stab this tongue wrapped around Elena’s ankle!!!”
A booming voice filled my ears as I mindlessly lunged forward to pierce the tongue ensnaring Elena.
[Lower your body immediately!]
? What is this sudden warning?! Before I could even digest that thought, I was flung across the room.
It was my first time floating in the air like this.
Suddenly my view shot up, and I was hurtling about 7 or 8 meters, like a bird, before smashing into the wall.
“Ahhhhhh! Aaaah, fucccck! Uaaaaah!!!”
It felt like my entire body had been crushed!
From my head down to my toes, it was as if someone was hammering my bones like they were a blacksmith’s anvil. It struck me belatedly that the crazed tongue had soared in like a projectile to smack me away.
Ah, so that’s why the warning to lower my body popped up, huh.
But what was I supposed to do about it?
Why didn’t it warn me earlier? It was already too late by the time I got the message!
That’s when I began to realize the mechanics behind that ‘warning.’
The Sage’s Advice only activated when danger was about to make itself known in mere seconds. The reason it hadn’t appeared when we were wandering through the hotel or even while entering the pool was painfully straightforward:
The mouth had not yet emerged.
Furthermore, even upon its emergence, the warning didn’t go off immediately and only appeared when that tongue was mere moments from making me half-dead!
Finally, I came to understand that this ‘Advice’ had its share of flaws more than I anticipated.
But would it be too late now?
I felt like I was on the verge of death.
Was this what it felt like to be run over by a truck? It hurt—no, it hurt so damn much I could barely even black out.
And from somewhere, I glimpsed a red liquid being spewed out.
What was that? Even in this hellscape, I was curious. Eunsol-noona was wielding some peculiar container and spraying it around like it was magic.
Strangely enough, each time the liquid made contact, the tongues recoiled as if startled, retreating and twitching in fright. Even the big tongue was no exception.
As she poured the liquid out in a frenzy, the one that had hit me and the two that had been clutching onto Elena suddenly lost their previous disgusting ferocity, collapsing and trembling as though the earlier scene had been nothing more than a mirage.
What sort of miraculous potion had Eunsol-noona obtained? How was she able to defuse such a monster with such ease?
The lips… they began to close.
The swirling vortex inside the pool ceased altogether.
When the chaos finally settled and my tension dissipated, I lost consciousness.
*
“Unni, unni! Oppa, oppa! What do we do? Kain-oppa isn’t waking up! Kain-oppa? Oppa?”
“Songee, stop distracting me and stay still! Jinchul, you do martial arts, don’t you? Can you do first aid or something?”
“I’m doing it right now. His arm… his arm is completely crushed! He’s only alive because his arm absorbed the shock. If it had struck his stomach, he’d be dead already.”
“His arm… I may not be a doctor, but it’s clear this isn’t just an arm injury, right? He was flung! I saw Kain fly at least 10 meters!”
“I saw that too. If we don’t get a doctor, his insides are going to be a mess. This, this is… I can’t just prop him up with a splint, we need a doctor! You hotel bastards, we need a doctor! Can’t you hear me?!”
“Noona, shouldn’t we buy something from the market? Do you have any potions?”
“The market stocks are all the same boring stuff. There’s no gun, so how could there possibly be any potion? Even if there were, it wouldn’t solve anything. I already bought capsaicin and I’ve used up all the bandages I bought three times this week.”
Voices. Voices. It was all so chaotic I was vaguely coming to my senses.
Ah, so the miraculous potion was simply capsaicin. Funny enough, it was a torturous tongue we were dealing with.
As I mused over it, I realized the situation was beyond just measuring the strength of the tongue.
Amidst all the current hysteria, it was impressive how quickly noona thought to use capsaicin.
At some point, I felt something wrapped around my arm, and I could see people scrambling around in a frenzy.
There was a girl crying nearby. She didn’t need to cry so much.
A lady stood frozen, trembling as if she were about to lose her mind. Upon seeing such a beauty worrying about me, I couldn’t help but feel my life had some worth after all.
And then there was a boy running. What was he even running for? He seemed so lost he didn’t even realize he was in a panic.
In my line of sight, an alarm flickered.
[Return to Room 105 immediately.]
Room 105, the Room of Rest.
Did the concept of ‘Rest’ imply more than just providing food, drinks, and a place to sleep?
Thinking back to the games I used to play as a kid, inns were indeed places where you could sleep and fully restore your HP and MP…
Gathering the last of my strength, I managed to squeeze out a couple of words.
“105… Room 105.”
That was all I had left in me.
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