Escaping the Mystery Hotel-Chapter 232: Room 202, Cursed Room - The Little Mermaid (10)

User: Han Kain (Wisdom)

Date: Day 101

Current Location: Floor 2, Room 202 – Cursed Room ‘The Little Mermaid’

Sage’s Advice: 1

- Han Kain

Rain poured down—a salty, sea-scented torrent spilled endlessly from the sky.

At the same time, Elena and Liringanaur began to groan incessantly.

“What’s going on here?”

The doctor didn’t answer, instead, he examined Elena’s and Liringanaur’s bodies with a look of urgency.

“Scales!”

“What?”

“Something abnormal is happening to their bodies. Even their previously normal skin is transforming into scales! And that’s not all. There’s also something strange about their teeth—”

“H-haah.”

Elena’s voice began to emerge sluggishly.

“The rain... Liringanaur and I must not come into contact with this rain.”

With those words, Elena collapsed again.

Everyone could sense that this was no ordinary rain.

Yet, as the group rushed toward the limousine, they had all been exposed to the rain without issue.

Is it only affecting Elena and Liringanaur?

Could this be a cursed rain that targets merfolk?

“Hyung! Let’s get moving. We’ll keep both of them inside the limo for now.”

Before the words were fully spoken, the limousine sped down the rain-slicked road.

Beside him, Ahri spoke quietly, “We can’t keep them in the limo forever.”

“...”

“Especially Elena. Now that she has awakened from her seal, she must have a role to play. We need to take her to the port.”

“Let’s have Elena wear the Protective Suit. It’s completely water-resistant, so it’ll block the rain perfectly.”

“Let’s do that.”

Beside them, Seungyub spoke in an uneasy voice, “What about Liringanaur?”

No one answered.

There was only one Protective Suit.

- Screech! Thud!

Suddenly, something that resembled a human leaped out onto the middle of the road! The limousine swerved sharply but couldn’t avoid the collision.

“What the hell is that lunatic—”

“Jinchul! Just keep driving!”

No one could tell whether the thing they hit was a person or a monster, but there was no time to dwell on it.

“What was that? Did you see what it was?”

“I saw it. Just keep going.”

Noona’s expression was grim. It didn’t take us long to understand what it meant.

***Through the pitch-black night, a limousine sped down rain-soaked roads.

We were grateful it was nighttime, sparing us from witnessing the suffering of the talking fish sprawled on the ground with our bare eyes.

Life first emerged from the sea.

Tracing humanity’s lineage back through the ages led us to marine organisms.

And now, the rain pouring from the sky was beginning to reverse the history of the stars.

Screams. Screams. Screams.

The world was filled with the agony of the merfolk.

The excruciating pain of limbs transforming into fins while lungs turned into gills on land!

All the merfolk exposed to the outside were reverting to the primitive forms their ancestors had once assumed, singing a dirge of despair.

Driving was hellish.

Not only was it late at night and visibility poor, but now the roads were filled with merfolk screaming and running in every direction.

Jinchul-hyung navigated through the chaos, narrowly avoiding the merfolk with a skill that seemed acrobatic, but even he had his limits.

Amidst the turmoil, it was Elena who added to our confusion.

Her body, ruined by potent drugs, caused her to drift in and out of consciousness, providing fragments of information each time she awoke.

“Lee Suho. They say he was my lover. I barely even know who Lee Suho is, but he always wanted to share my suffering. He was saddened by the thought of me enduring nightmares that no one else could understand for the rest of my life.”

“...”

“One day, Lee Suho discovered one of the long-hidden secrets of the merfolk. How he found out, I still don’t know. It’s a secret only the Daughters of the Sea God were supposed to know.”

“...”

“The Daughters of the Sea God access the memories of their ancestors and record what they see. According to the records left by the first daughter who accessed the earliest memory, the first merfolk were originally humans.”

“...”

“The tale about merfolk who lived in the sea receiving human forms 800 years ago thanks to the Sea God’s mercy is a complete lie. In truth, the first merfolk were impoverished fishermen.”

“...”

“They were people who worked their bodies to the breaking point for over 12 hours a day on the sea yet had never eaten a full meal. One day, salvation found them. What kind of salvation? I don’t know. But they supposedly encountered an indescribable being in the dark abyss of the deep sea.”

“...”

“The God of the Sea ‘adopted’ those fishermen. That was how the first merfolk were born. Lee Suho uncovered this truth—that humans could become merfolk.”

“...”

“He begged me every day. He wanted to become a merfolk. To be adopted by the Sea God. ‘Don’t you have a way?’ he pleaded.”

“...”

“Sadly, there really was a way. Eventually, I gave in to his pleas. Was it because I couldn’t resist him?”

“...”

“No, that’s just an excuse. Maybe I, too, hoped he could understand my suffering. One day, as a Daughter of the Sea God, I bestowed the Sea’s blessing upon Lee Suho and turned him into a merfolk.”

“...”

“Once he became a merfolk, he started to dream like us. At first, he was happy to fulfill his wish, and I was happy to have someone who could empathize with me. But then... something strange happened.”

“...”

“He began speaking of memories older than any Daughter of the Sea God had ever reached. Memories that weren’t in any records I had seen—beyond 300 or 400 years, all the way back to 800 years ago, to when the first merfolk were born. Even older, to memories from the prehistoric times, thousands of years ago.”

After this, Elena didn’t wake up again until we reached the port. Listening to her explanation left me uneasy.

Who is the entity explaining these things to us?

Is it the “Hotel Elena” we know?

Or is it the Daughter of the Sea God?

At the start, she claimed not to know who Lee Suho was, but...

Everyone’s minds were tangled.

Each of us replayed Elena’s story, trying to process it.

Lee Suho, through some means, learned that the first merfolk were once humans. Realizing humans could become merfolk, he asked Elena, his lover and a Daughter of the Sea God, to turn him into one.

The problem was what happened next.

Once Lee Suho became a merfolk, he began receiving ancestral memories like the others.

However, the memories he accessed were far older than anything any Daughter of the Sea God had ever known.

Memories from 800 years ago, before the birth of the first merfolk.

What were those memories?

Was there something that predated the existence of the first merfolk?

What did Lee Suho see that drove him into madness so severe it turned an entire island into a living hell?

We had learned much, but many questions remained.

Where could we find the missing information?

If the knowledge possessed by the Daughters of the Sea God wasn’t enough, there was only one other source.

The Saintess of the Deep Sea among the Daughters of the Sea God—Serenade.

But for now, we had to reach the port.

The next step was clear: find a way to bring Serenade onto our side.

“We’re almost at the port. About four minutes left, according to the navigation.”

With Jinchul-hyung’s words, a tense atmosphere settled inside the limousine.

Ahri cautiously tried waking Elena.

“Can you move?”

“...Yeah. Am I still wearing the Protective Suit?”

“You can’t step outside without it. You absolutely have to wear it.”

***The humidity was oppressive, so high that just opening my mouth brought a salty tang.

With every few steps, moisture clung to my skin.

The port we arrived at could only be described as a realm of the inhuman.

The torrential rain, imbued with an incomprehensible power, didn’t even need to fall here—it had no reason to.

The port had already transformed into a sodden space where land and sea seemed to merge due to the sheer level of moisture in the air.

Who were these merfolk and fish flopping about?

Were they workers at the port?

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Even at this late hour?

I couldn’t say.

Massive fish the size of humans were floundering everywhere.

One small mercy: these fish, having lost their vocal cords, could no longer emit the agonized screams that had filled the air earlier.

Amidst this chaos, the scenario updated.

Thankfully, the content was short and didn’t take long to read.

Scenario: The Cursed Room – ‘The Little Mermaid’

Kadaru’dah stirred. The regression to the primordial era has begun. Find an escape route.

“What the hell is this? Just ‘prepare to run’? You could at least give us a clue about the escape route!”

No amount of frustration would coax an answer out of the Status Window. Instead, a strange wailing echoed across the entire port. At the same time, I realized what “regression to the primordial era” meant.

The land was collapsing.

The solid ground that those standing on two feet trusted was crumbling like a sandcastle.

After we arrived at the port and were overwhelmed by the situation, the ground itself began to give way, throwing my comrades into a panic.

They scattered, scrambling onto whatever structures remained stable.

I was no exception.

I climbed onto a car, then onto a truck, clung desperately to a streetlamp, and eventually made my way onto the roof of a warehouse.

It kept collapsing.

The land disintegrated back into the sea, and the sea surged to engulf the world.

Was this salvation for the merfolk, who were transforming into fish?

What could be more welcome for fish suffering on land than the sea reclaiming the earth?

But I soon realized this was a naïve thought.

The sea overtaking the land didn’t just free the fish—it turned the earth into a hunting ground for the sea’s creatures.

From the depths of the dark, vast ocean emerged descendants of the sea, creatures that had awaited their time in the abyss.

They moved across the sticky ground like flicking through a mudflat, preying on the newly transformed fish-like merfolk, swallowing them whole.

A massacre unfolded. I had no idea what to do in this chaos.

Why had we come to the port in the first place?

It was Elena, the one who had uncovered the room’s secrets, who had led us here.

But why did Elena guide us to the port?

- Duuuuuuuu!

A deep, resonant cry echoed across the port.

The earth, barely holding its form, collapsed like a sandcastle.

My comrades, who had been holding out on top of buildings and vehicles, were swept into the sea in an instant.

And then—against the backdrop of the moon, the God of the Sea rose.

[Kadaru’dah.png]

[The time has come. The time of the great cycle has arrived.]

Advice: 1 → 0

Extend your right arm as far as possible.

Half-dazed, I followed the advice and extended my arm.

My hand grasped something heavy, which was quickly swept away by the rushing water. After drifting together for some time, I realized what it was.

The Protective Suit.

If the Protective Suit was here, then what had happened to Elena, who had been wearing it?

Elena: Kain, can you hear me?