Chapter 13 - Rest, Hotel Basement Floor - 'Living Swimming Pool' (2) Fin
Chapter 13
[User: Han Gain (Jihye)
Date: Day 3
Current Location: Basement Floor, Swimming Pool
Sage's Advice: 3]
Twitch
Twitch
Suddenly, the floor heaved. Did I step on something? The moment I wondered that—
"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
"What the f-fuck is that, fuck, uaaaaaah!"
Screams and curses filled the swimming pool.
Something, something strange 'sprouted up'.
From the floor, from the walls, from the ceiling, lips suddenly protruded.
As if giant human lips had been peeled off and pasted on, the giant lips parted.
Tongues as thick as forearms. No, can something that stretches out like that even be called a 'tongue'?
A frog's tongue does stretch out like that to catch flies.
The problem was, 'we were the flies.'
Thud!
My balance was instantly destroyed.
Panicking, I shifted my gaze to my right leg; a tongue that had shot up from the floor was gripping my ankle.
I frantically shook my leg back and forth and tried to tear the horrific tongue off with my hands, but it was no use.
It didn't budge, as if a thick rope was holding my leg tight!
Bweeeeeeeeeeeeek!
A shrieking sound unbelievable to have come from a human mouth.
What? When I turned my gaze toward the sound, I saw the 'lips' twisted in what clearly looked like a scream of agony, letting out a shriek.
As expected, Jincheol-hyung is different from us. He just 'ripped' the tongue off with pure strength and threw it aside, making the lips scream!
So that monster feels pain too. Just like a human tongue.
When he snapped a couple of tongues with his monstrous strength, as if tearing a rope bare-handed, the tongues stopped going toward him, as if they'd had enough.
Once that happened, Jincheol-hyung moved quickly, and in less than a minute, Eunsol-noona, Seungyeop, and I found our freedom.
However—the real situation was just beginning.
"Gasp, gasp, heoogh, cough, please, please, uaaagh!!!"
Of all times, the two people in the water, Elena and Songi, couldn't get out.
The moment I approached and looked inside the pool, I was speechless.
Lips. Giant—lips. Incredibly massive lips.
They were on an entirely different dimension in size compared to the lips that sprouted from the walls or floor outside the pool.
At this point, wasn't it the size of a whale's mouth?
The thickness of the tongues coming from inside was also on another level.
If the other tongues were as thick as thin forearms, these tongues were as thick as a grown person's leg.
Moreover, there weren't just one, but two tongues.
Before I could do anything, Jincheol-hyung approached.
He'd manage somehow. Over the past few days, I had confirmed his beyond-common-sense monstrous strength multiple times.
Even if they were tongues as thick as a human leg...
Someone with the monstrous strength to crush concrete with a fist should be able to try something.
The situation flowed differently from my hopeful expectations.
"Ugh, no, why is this bastard's mouth so huge! Gainah!! Come help me pull!"
I ran over frantically. Hyung was putting on a feat of strength, pulling Elena with one arm and Songi with the other, but eventually let go of one hand, and I pulled Songi with all my might.
While pulling—I suddenly found it strange.
The tongue's grip was strong, but it was still a tongue, after all.
It wasn't hard like steel.
Even with my level of strength, it felt squishy; with the strength Jincheol-hyung had shown so far, shouldn't he have been able to snap the tongue itself with force?
I had already seen him effortlessly break the smaller tongues in one or two seconds like snapping rotten ropes when saving the others, so I thought it wouldn't be difficult even if they were big tongues.
It was only after I approached and started pulling Songi that I realized the problem.
As soon as the anomaly occurred, both Songi and Elena tried to get out of the water, but they were too late, so most of their bodies were still submerged. Naturally, the tongues holding their legs and pulling them were also underwater.
How could someone who struggles to even stay afloat in the water go in there and snap a tongue!
Actually, even being good at swimming was a problem.
Regardless of how strong one was, unless they ignored the laws of physics, it was hard to exert proper strength in a state where there was nothing to support the body underwater.
Little by little, little by little, Songi and I were dragged down to the bottom of the pool simultaneously.
Crrrrrrack!
The mouth at the bottom of the pool opens.
The water swirls, sucked into the giant maw.
I feel an even harder pressure bearing down on us.
Ah... The mouth! That mouth! Countless grotesque teeth glint within the gaping maw.
At the very least, if we go in there, a clean death is out of the question.
Compared to dying inside that, freezing to death in Room 101 was quite a merciful death, wasn't it.
As the mouth opened, Songi's scream, mixed with crying, doubled in volume, and now my ears were ringing.
Tinklererere—
Then, a metallic object dropped next to me.
A silver dagger.
The decorative dagger we found in the hallway on the morning we decided to enter Room 101.
I didn't even get to use it in Room 101, but I still kept it with me.
It was so flashy and looked so expensive that I secretly planned to keep carrying it around, and I remember joking around with Seungyeop and Jincheol-hyung with it.
We played with an artwork worth tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of won, as if it were a toy.
I hear Seungyeop shouting something.
He must have pulled the dagger from my clothes and thrown it.
I understood his intent. I picked up the dagger and stabbed the tongue with all my might.
This tongue was strong, but not hard like steel, so there was no way it could withstand a blade!
Stab—
As expected, the dagger pierced into the tongue.
A stiff sensation, like cutting through incredibly tough meat.
A stench nauseating enough to make me vomit and blood splattered up.
Bweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A tremendous scream, so loud it pierced through my ringing ears,
suppressed all other sounds and filled the swimming pool.
And finally, Songi and I gained our freedom.
"Oppa, oppa, thank—blegh, thank—cough, no"
"Save those words for later and just catch your breath"
"You save those words for later and stab this tongue here too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
A booming, thick shout.
I ran frantically to stab the tongue on Elena's ankle.
[Immediately lower your body to the floor!]
? What is this suddenly—
And I flew into the sky.
It was my first time in my life floating up into the air like this.
Suddenly my vision soared, and my body flew about seven or eight meters like a bird before slamming into the wall.
"Aaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck shiiiiiiit! Uwaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"
It feels like my entire body is crushed.
From head to toe, a sensation as if someone is beating me with a hammer.
Belatedly, I realized. That crazy tongue—flew at me like a shot put and slammed into me.
Ah, so that's why the warning to lower my waist appeared.
But what was I supposed to do about it?
Shouldn't it read the future a bit and give warnings in advance?
By the time I saw that, it was already too late...
Ah, even in this chaos, I partially figured out the mechanism of that 'warning'.
The 'Sage's Advice' only appears when the danger actually materializes, when the crisis is about to strike in just a few seconds.
The reason the 'Sage's Advice' didn't activate while we were walking around the hotel amenities or even when we entered the pool was very simple.
It was because that mouth hadn't emerged in the pool yet.
Even after the mouth appeared, the warning didn't pop up immediately; it only appeared right before the mouth's tongue was about to half-kill me!
Only then did I realize—this 'advice' had more weaknesses than I thought.
But isn't it already too late.
I feel like I'm going to die.
This is truly beyond the limit of what a human body can endure, isn't it.
Is this what it feels like to be hit by a truck.
It hurts, it hurts so much.
It hurts so much that it's even hard to lose consciousness.
And, from somewhere—I see a red liquid being sprinkled.
What is that? Even in this situation, I'm curious. Eunsol-noona is swinging a strange container and splashing the liquid wildly.
Strangely, the liquid showed a truly magical power.
Whenever the liquid touched them, the tongues didn't just run away as if startled; they just flopped down and trembled. Even the large tongues were no exception.
When she poured the liquid onto the large tongues with the momentum of emptying the container, the tongue that struck me and the two tongues holding Elena simply rolled on the floor shivering, the disgusting vigor they had shown until a moment ago vanishing in an instant.
Just what kind of miracle potion did Eunsol-noona get? To incapacitate such a monster so easily?
The mouth—closes.
The whirlpool that had formed in the pool stops.
And, when the chaos finally subsided, as the tension released, I lost consciousness.
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"Unni, unni, unni, oppa, oppa, oppa, what do we do, what do we do... Gain-oppa won't wake up, he won't wake up, Gain-oppa? Oppa?"
"Songi, you're being loud, so please just stay still. Jincheol, didn't you say you worked out? Can't you do first aid or something?"
"I'm doing it right now. The arm... the arm is just completely crushed. It's only to this extent because the arm absorbed the impact; if he had been hit in the stomach, he would already be dead."
"The arm... I'm not a doctor, but this... no matter how I look at it, it's not just the arm that's hurt, right? He flew... I saw it too. Gain just flew at least 10 meters and crashed!"
"I saw it too... without even looking, his internal organs are completely messed up. This is, this is... just putting on a splint like this won't fix it, we need a doctor, no, fuck you hotel bastards, we need a doctor!!!!! Can't you hear me!!!!!!!!!!"
"Noona... noona... shouldn't we buy something from that market? Aren't there any potions or something?"
"The items in that market don't deviate from common sense... There aren't even guns, so there's no way there'd be anything like potions. Actually, even if there were, it's hopeless. I already bought capsaicin, and I used up all three weekly uses to buy the bandages we're wrapping him in now."
Voices. Voices. It's so loud that I vaguely regain consciousness.
Ah, so the identity of that miracle potion was capsaicin.
Come to think of it, they were tongues.
It'd be weirder if they endured having pure capsaicin poured on them.
This wasn't a matter of how strong or weak the tongue was.
Anew, Eunsol-noona's quick wit in recalling capsaicin in the midst of that chaos was also impressive.
Before I knew it, something was touching my arm, and people were scurrying about.
A crying girl. There's no need for that.
A young lady standing and shivering as if she's lost her mind.
Seeing a beauty like her worry over me, I didn't live in vain.
A running boy. Why is he running anyway.
He seems so out of it that he doesn't even know what he's doing himself.
And, a notification blinking in one corner of my vision
[Return to Room 105 immediately]
Room 105, the room of rest.
Did the meaning of 'rest' not end with simply providing food, drink, and a place to sleep?
Come to think of it, in the games I played when I was young, an 'inn' was a place where your health and mana would fully recover after sleeping...
I really spat out exactly two words with all my dying strength.
"Room 105, Room 105"
That was all the strength left in me.