### Chapter 275 – Meeting (2)
—
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 131
Current Location: Floor 1, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 3]
— Han Kain
—
As we prepared to enter Room 203 again, Grandpa immediately spoke up.
“Shouldn’t we first discuss how to gather everyone? Kain, is the Status Window normalized now?”
“It’s normalized, and once we go back in, we’ll have a script and access to location info too. But honestly, there’s no simple way to gather everyone.”
That’s something I can say for sure. I realized it through our previous attempts to regroup.
“We’re probably scattered over a vast area, at least the size of the Australian continent. Just knowing our location won’t exactly help us come together. We don’t have any teleportation tools… Thankfully, though, it doesn’t feel like all eight of us are fully dispersed; it looks like we have roughly two groups clustered together.”
So it’s me and Jinchul, Grandpa and the doctor, Eunsol and Songyi, Seungyub and Elena. Each pair is positioned together from their respective factions.
“Geez… Considering this situation, it seems knowing our locations will amount to crap.”
“If we’re lucky it might say something like ‘72km northwest near the oak forest.’ But even knowing that doesn’t mean we can easily gather everyone.”
Jinchul chimed in, “Let’s just abandon what seems impossible. We’ll need to regroup gradually over time again. Are we going to the mountains again?”
As soon as that was mentioned, everyone’s gaze naturally landed on Ahri, since if we were headed back to the mountains, she posed the biggest risk.
If we recover blessings, can we beat Ahri this time?
Some expressed confident attitudes about it.
“If we go back, can’t we win this time? Honestly, without blessings, we couldn’t use our stars well, right? Am I the only one thinking like this? Kain, you couldn’t even attempt the ‘Manifestation Power’ without the protection of the Status Window. You wouldn’t feel confident unleashing powerful powers without it, right?”
“To some extent, yes.”
“Seungyub, you could do nothing without blessings. Even Elena here couldn’t have a calm mind.”
“Well… I struggled, but even with a calm mind, I wouldn’t have necessarily been stronger. It felt like I used extremely powerful ominous imaginings.”
“Even so, if you could use ‘Justice’ against Ahri, don’t you think you could win?”
“Well, that’s true.”
… My thoughts were entirely different. While I gathered my thoughts before speaking, Ahri chimed in first.
“First off, I have no memory of the fight in the mountains. But based on what you all told me, I think Jincheol has missed one key detail: you already beat me once.”
That’s right.
If Ahri were the only enemy, we technically won during the first attempt. After Jinchul used the stars to bring down the building where Ahri was hiding, I stopped her, allowing Grandpa’s attack tactic to work.
“Why did we end up in defeat at the end of that fight, then? It was because the robots intervened, right?”
Mentioning the robots caused Grandpa to express doubt.
“I thought we couldn’t deploy robots inside the city at first. They seemed to disappear when they approached the valley area from outside the mountains. But that wasn’t the case. The thing that killed me at the last moment was a robot that suddenly popped out from the wall, and I heard Seungyub also fell to a robot, didn’t he?”
In other words, the Adversary Ahri could summon robots inside the city. But why didn’t she deploy them from the start? Various reasons came to mind.
“Maybe she wanted to avoid destroying the city. The weapons seemed to shoot heavy artillery, with each bullet serving like a cannonball. If even one robot goes wild, the ruins would turn to ash in an instant.”
The doctor offered a different perspective.
“Perhaps robots are in very limited supply. Back when civilization thrived, robots could’ve been produced en masse, but right now, with civilization collapsed, a robot from hundreds or thousands of years ago would have immense value since there’s no way to produce more.”
Ahri raised an interesting point.
“As I listen to you discussing the battle dynamics, I honestly feel I might’ve fought inefficiently. Maybe capturing you was my real goal rather than simply killing you. If I aimed to kill you outright, then why would I show myself and engage you in a brawl when there are so many of you?”
There seemed to be multiple reasons involved here. The conclusion remained clear: the Adversary could summon robots inside the city, and that alone made her extremely difficult to handle. Even with blessings on our side, that remains a daunting problem.
Blessings like Justice or the Grimoire would be useless against robots. Dr. Jincheol could use the stars more freely while recovering blessings, but the difference in combat distance makes things just as difficult.
“Also, I’d like to remind you. The return of blessings means I can likely use the ‘Presence-less Girl’ too.”
That Presence-less Girl had the ability to be extraordinarily difficult to notice even when right in front of you. Could we stand a chance against an Ahri who regains such powers and blasts lasers at us?
As I pondered these points, I started to reach a conclusion.
The ‘mountains’ might not be a place we should aim to reach during the last moments. From our first attempt in Room 203, we may have failed by skipping past the ‘undergoing processes’ and heading directly to the final boss zone.
To solidify that judgment, I finally used an appropriate ability that I hadn’t engaged with for a while.
[Advice: 3 -> 2]
“Is there an issue with the judgment of crossing the mountains?”
[Focus on the choices that yielded results rather than clinging to the failed ones.]
“Wait a second!”
I temporarily paused the meeting to share the advice I received. The meaning of ‘don’t cling to the failed choice; focus on the achieved one’ was quite clear.
Let’s examine the results. What about our judgment to move toward the mountains? A failure. In the end, no one survived there, and while we gained a lot of information, that only matters because there was a successful escape choice prior to this.
The successful escape choice was the one chosen by Eunsol and Songyi, who went in the opposite direction of the mountains, chasing after traces of the divine creature in the sky!
As I thought of this, my companions gradually began to nod. However, there were still challenges with that choice.
“There’s a problem. The only one who can see that blue creature in the sky is Eunsol.”
The doctor pointed this out, and Eunsol responded.
“We don’t necessarily need to see the creature in the sky. I didn’t always move while watching the sky. We’ll simply follow the shadow on the ground. The question is whether we can easily spot shadows from your faction’s location.”
Grandpa picked up on that right away.
“Isn’t that an easy enough problem? Whenever the shadow passes, they say it’s unusually bountiful compared to the surrounding wasteland?”
“That’s right. There were several times over the ten days I spent following along with Songyi that we saw patches of grass suddenly brimming with fruit in a barren plain.”
“If the whole world is desolate but a specific area has tasty fruits and fresh water flowing, it’s obviously a trace left by that creature. If we follow those traces, we should naturally spot the shadows too.”
It seemed like we had decided how to proceed in the next round. This time, we would ignore the mountains and follow the mysterious being floating in the sky.
“Speaking of the next round, who had that protective suit?”
Ahri quickly summarized.
“It didn’t exist. Seungyub thought it was a protective suit when he got closer, but it wasn’t.”
We entered Room 203 during the first attempt without protective suits.
“It’s not surprising, is it? Those suits don’t have ownership among any of us. What had happened until now? Usually, I’d manage them, but when entering the cursed room, someone among us had to wear them.”
“That was the case.”
“This time, that wasn’t true. I just got summoned, so I didn’t have time to grab my protective suit. So it stayed in my room! We began without a protective suit. And….”
“And?”
“I think the same principle applies to the hourglass. Has anyone seen an hourglass inside Room 203?”
“…”
The moment that wretched word ‘hourglass’ was mentioned, everyone’s irritation peaked.
“Ugh! Can you believe this crazy thing again?”
Even usually composed Elena didn’t raise her eyebrows this time.
“It really went overboard this time. Waking up suddenly in the morning without warning just to lure us into a trap?”
That’s right. I wondered if there was another reason for calling us so early, but no matter how hard I thought about it, the reason seemed clear.
The night before the incident, I was studying the Grimoire and had vision problems. Given the hotel’s properties, I likely woke up with restored vision after a night’s sleep. They intentionally called everyone early to prevent any kind of effective response.
“Now, let’s take a look at that damn hourglass.”
“Sounds good.”
With all that annoyance, as soon as we reached the second floor in the elevator, everyone clammed up. The hourglass was coming into view, and it naturally made everyone tense.
…
…
It felt like we were observing radioactive waste. No one dared to go near the table, gawking at the hourglass like a bunch of fools.
“Ugh! Seriously! I’m going to take a look!”
I quickly grabbed Ahri’s shoulder, who was confidently stepping forward. It wasn’t the time to act rashly. That thing was more dangerous than a ticking time bomb!
“Hey! Relax! I’m going to use advice right now.”
[Advice: 2 -> 1]
“Give me some warning about the hourglass. Don’t hold back, just tell me straight!”
[Be polite. Don’t rashly flip it over before learning how to use it. There are safety measures.]
‘Safety measures?’ Looks like I need to go check it out myself.
“Hey! Kain—”
“Brother, don’t talk to me! I’m trying to focus!”
“R-Right.”
Slowly, carefully, making sure nothing bad happens, I cautiously lifted it, inspecting the structure. It looked like two opaque flasks stuck together. I noticed a small gear on the side.
Is this the safety mechanism? Turning the gear cautiously, I heard a click, and suddenly, the gooey substance inside the flasks solidified.
“What did you just do? That was a weird sound!”
Instead of answering, I slowly turned the hourglass upside down. Upon witnessing that, my companions’ expressions turned as pale as ghosts.
“Kain! What the hell are you doing—”
“…”
“…”
“Nothing happened?”
“Brother, you suddenly calling me a crazy bastard was uncalled for.”
“N-No, I said that out of surprise, just out of surprise.”
Turning this gear solidifies the contents. After this transformation, even flipping over the hourglass doesn’t appear to cause anything to happen.
You know, without such safety mechanisms, an hourglass would be totally unusable. How would you use it if you could drop it at any time and trigger a massive disaster?
Ahri carefully approached.
“Good, good. Now I understand how to use it. Lock it in place with this gear and just release the gear when it’s time to use it. But when do we use it? To turn the hotel’s time back to the future? What does that mean?”
“Not sure… I still have one last advice to check.”
“Let’s think a little more about its usage. Also, Kain, make sure you carry it from now on.”
“Cough! M-Me?”
“Why? It’s the rule that the one who first handles these things should keep them. Plus, you have advice! It might just say ‘turn the clock now’ when you really need it!”
“…”
When I looked around, no one seemed willing to approach the hourglass. Jinchul, who usually acts like Hercules, didn’t even glance my way…
—
“Okay! The meeting for today is almost done. We’ve gathered information, and we’ve settled on what to do when we enter Room 203 again. As for the hourglass… well, at least we know how to use it safely, so that’s a win. Now, the last topic is related to Sanghyeon’s suggestion. There was talk about changing rooms, so what does everyone think about that?”
“What do you think, sister?”
—
I will reward you with consistent updates.
+ I have updated the naming designation for Ahri’s abilities.
My site has received a lot of DMCA notices, lol. From now on, I will update the MTL on https://darkmtl.com/.
The site is fast and lightweight because there are no ads yet. However, the theme is different from Cybor-TL, so take some time to familiarize yourself.
Support me by donating at least $10, and you'll have the right to request any novel from Novelpia (excluding 19+ content) using a newly developed tool.