### Chapter 192 – Party Time – The Secret of the Second Floor (1)
—
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 94
Current Location: Ice Hell – Room of Revival
Sage’s Advice: 0]
—
After heeding the drone’s advice and returning to the second floor, we took a moment to check on the colleagues who went back to the first floor. The ‘prayer team’, who had it much rougher than us, had all entered Room 105 and hadn’t come out. Grandpa tried to reach them through the conversation tab, but the only one who responded was Jinchul-hyung. The rest of the crew seemed to be in a deep slumber.
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not, but according to the status window, everyone’s in survival condition, so there wasn’t much to worry about. Even if limbs were flying around, as long as they entered breathing, Room 105 is where people get resurrected, right? They should come out alright eventually. We decided to focus on exploring the second floor.
And time drifted endlessly.
Kim Ahri: “Anyone find anything?”
Kim Mooksung: “It’s freezing.”
We found absolutely nothing, truly. It’s not like this was the first time we were searching. We recently searched with Eunsol-noona, who had obtained the Eye of the Seer. Even she barely found Ice Hell and couldn’t dig up anything else, so for us to find something special all by ourselves would be quite bizarre.
The sections that were expected to turn into special rooms after completion are just icy plains right now, and aside from the already formed Room 201, there was nothing around. I tried opening the door to Room 201, but the inside was just as empty as the outside.
I even searched around Ice Hell’s exterior, but surprise, it was just icy plains and blizzards. At one point, Grandpa started rummaging through the floor looking for some mythical mountain ginseng, but it was all a wild goose chase. Thankfully, we could take periodic breaks in Ice Hell, which blocks out external cold. Otherwise, only I in my protective suit would have been able to do a proper search.
Around 5 PM, as dinner time approached, we eventually returned to the Ice Hell room to rest. Ahri, having arrived a bit earlier, sighed and pulled out some hot coffee.
“Everyone, grab a cup. Nobody found anything?”
“Nothing… Can we even find anything ourselves?”
“I was thinking the same. If there was anything useful to find, Eunsol would’ve caught it ages ago with her superhuman sight. In other words, we’re trying to find something with our bare hands that even someone with an ultra-telescope and magnifying glass couldn’t spot.”
“What has Grandpa discovered? Looking for mountain ginseng, I hear?”
“…”
“Not secretly munching on some, right?”
Grandpa’s reply to Ahri’s lame joke was a deep sigh.
“Why is the blizzard still raging…? If you look closely, doesn’t this hotel’s ‘settings’ make no sense? Isn’t the cold from the grudge of the dead escaping from hell?”
“Right,” Ahri replied.
“But the room that leads to that hell is rather warm, and it’s snowing from the sky, not related to hell! This cursed second floor has no ceiling! Will it appear when repairs are done?”
“Seriously… I’m looking at it, and the settings are all over the place. Snow is falling from the sky, totally unrelated to hell, while the so-called cold source is actually warm.”
As Ahri and Grandpa grumbled about the hotel’s ‘absurd settings,’ a subtle thought began to stir in my mind. It’s not new for the hotel to be nonsensical, so I shouldn’t dwell on it now. If it were a regular hotel, they wouldn’t invite customers to a place with unfinished construction.
I needed to understand that the restful prayers and revival related to Ice Hell are more like game quests connected to hotel operations, so fixating on the settings isn’t necessary.
More than that, could that absurd setting itself be a trap to conceal something?
Disregarding the hotel’s obviously cobbled-together setup, what’s the ‘true reason’ the second floor remains icy? It must be because of the blizzard outside, right?
…
—I jolted up!
“Kain? What’s up?”
“The blizzard.”
“Huh?”
“How exactly does a blizzard build up?”
“What do you mean—”
“The entrance door to the first floor was under the sky. A really high sky! The clouds were far below. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly, but judging by the clouds being so low, we must be at the top of the troposphere, right?”
“Uh… maybe?”
“The hotel is above the clouds. The snow forms in the clouds. How can there be a blizzard in a hotel that’s above the clouds, even without a ceiling?”
Ahri and Grandpa’s mouths dropped open simultaneously, and everyone’s gaze shot upwards. When we first explored the second floor, I recalled what my sister found with the Eye of the Seer—a ‘mountain.’ I also remembered that while Grandpa was on the first floor, we couldn’t use the conversation tab when we were on the second floor.
Why was that? The distance limitation of the conversation tab had already been confirmed in ‘Common Sense Renovating Media’ and ‘House of Horror.’ It’s surprisingly wide; it wouldn’t block just because we changed floors in the building.
“Sis found something that looked like a ‘mountain’ beyond the ceiling of the second floor, right? The second floor differs in location from the first. Maybe!”
Maybe the second floor is on the ground!
—
Around 5:30 PM, I went down to the first floor to summon Jinchul-hyung again. Grandpa was behaving unusually nervous.
“Sorry for calling you while you were resting. Things are a bit urgent right now…”
Grandpa’s hesitance seemed comical, and Jinchul-hyung chuckled lightly.
“Apologizing doesn’t suit you! What’s the reason, just spill it.”
I shared our hints from the Owl and the drone, relating the blizzard coming down through the ceiling to confirm that the second floor’s location is different from the first, and suggested heading outside to the second floor.
“Wow! I’ve been out on the second floor multiple times and knew there was no ceiling, but it never struck me to knock a wall out to get outside. I assumed breaking through would just lead to a fatal drop since we’d be up in the sky.”
“We just realized that now. We figured the first floor had to be in the sky, so of course, we assumed the hotel as a whole was in the sky. Who would have thought the second floor would be in a different place entirely!”
“How do you plan to get out? By smashing through the wall? Come to think of it, Kain, you’ve destroyed part of the hotel too, right?”
“Yep. The hotel’s durability isn’t different from an average building. It’s totally something we can break through.”
Though, I wouldn’t be breaking it down with my bare hands, even with super strength from the protective suit. No way could I smash through a concrete building with that level of power.
There’s only one person among us who can smash down a building.
—
After arriving on the second floor, things started going smoothly. Although Jinchul-hyung looked more gaunt than usual from praying at the Scented Candle of Rest, his strength was intact. Initially, he contemplated using the power of the ‘Star Fragment of the Otherworld’ to break through, but he soon decided on a method he had used in ‘The Cube’, considering our safety and his limits.
— Thud! Thud!
… Ahri seemed genuinely awed.
“I’m amazed even after seeing it twice. Did you anticipate using the protective suit as an ‘indestructible blunt weapon’ when the hotel gave it to you?”
As I listened, I became curious and asked.
“Didn’t this happen in your first hotel experience?”
“No. Now that I think about it, the second floor’s position might have been different, but nobody back then realized what we do now. Everyone thought the second floor was naturally beneath the ocean, and nobody thought to break down the walls.”
I felt a bit nostalgic. It’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that the first and second floors exist as ‘different spaces’ physically. That’s something that doesn’t occur in the real world according to common sense.
For the first floor, you can confirm the space outside through the transparent glass door, so it’s easy to assume that the entire ‘hotel’ is situated in the same location as the first floor. Just like how we assumed the hotel was definitively in the sky, Ahri might have thought the whole hotel was in the ocean during her first party.
In truth, there were many hints.
1. There was a mountain-like object beyond the second floor’s ceiling. Only a handful of mountains could be at a height above the clouds, and even those mountains only peek at their tops above the clouds, making it hard to be in a ‘looking up’ position in a hotel that’s well above the clouds.
2. The first floor is in the sky above the clouds, yet snow formed from those clouds is falling on the second floor.
3. In an average building, the physical distance between the first and second floors shouldn’t be over 10 meters. At that distance, there’s no way the conversation tab would get blocked.
4. The horizontal area of the second floor is much larger than the first.
All of these hints pointed to the conclusion that the first and second floors are not part of the same connected building, but rather separate spaces altogether.
“Guess moving between the first and second floors via the ‘elevator’ has really distorted our perception.”
“Since we used the elevator to travel, it’s only natural we thought it was a simple ‘upward’ movement.”
“Could the Owl’s advice to focus on the differing repair timings have meant this?”
Ahri nodded her head.
“If repairs are finished and a ceiling appears, then we wouldn’t have noticed anything. The ‘mountain’ wouldn’t be visible anymore, and snow wouldn’t fall in, causing many hints to disappear.”
“What could be outside on the second floor?”
“Who knows… let’s hope it’s not a monster. And…”
“And what?”
“I feel like I’m pouring cold water on the situation, but I don’t think we can escape this way. Just a hunch, though.”
— Bang! Rumbling!
Amidst the sound akin to thunder and something collapsing, Jinchul-hyung finally managed to smash through the wall with his indomitable pickaxe, creating a hole leading to the outside of the second floor.
It didn’t look all that different from the second floor. After all, the blizzard that had turned the second floor into something hellish probably originated outside the hotel. The heavy snowfall and searing winds were so intense that it was hard to even open our eyes.
However, outside the second floor was ‘land’.
With our mouths gaping open in awe, we cautiously stepped onto the ‘land’ outside the hotel.
On day 94 of our entry into Pioneer Hotel, we finally arrived in the external space of the hotel.
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