“Yes, thank you.”
I greet the guests with a smile as they pay for their lodging. They looked fresh and youthful, but the girl turns to me and asks.
“Where did your grandma go yesterday?”
“Oh, I’m taking care of things since grandma is resting.”
“I see, you must be her grandson? Commendable.”
The guy adds a little more to the tip, and I smile even wider, thanking him.
As the two leave the hotel, I quickly count the money, and wow, it’s better than I expected.
“Hey, why not just quit being a Sherpa and open a business instead?”
Maybe if I save up enough, I could easily live like this.
“To do that, I guess I have no choice.”
I step behind the counter and put a thick safe in front of me. I’d been too lazy to deal with it, but with the thought of getting all I can, I drew my sword and split the safe in two.
Just then, I heard a guy’s voice from behind.
“You crazy bastard… I have the key, you know…”
It was the three guys who rolled down the stairs and fainted yesterday. They were tied up with a huge bump on their heads—it was my masterpiece.
“Oh, right? Sorry, but this is easier.”
What can I say? Swinging my sword is way simpler than searching for a key and turning it.
Inside, there was a hefty stack of cash that made me gasp.
“Wow, they really raked it in, huh?”
I could tell this wasn’t just money made from running a hotel; some of it was slightly stained with blood, which got me even tenser.
“Uh, grandma? Have you seen our group?”
“The black-haired male student isn’t showing up in his room.”
I heard Rin and Hayun’s voices from outside. With a smile, I went out to greet them.
“I’m the owner here now.”
“Huh? Why are you out here?”
“…What have you done this time?”
Rin looked flustered while Hayun shot suspicious glances at me. I began to explain and pointed to the three guys and a spider-human I tied up behind the counter.
The spider’s legs had all been chopped off, so I couldn’t even call it a spider-human anymore.
“I heard they called this place a Murder Hotel. They were planning to attack not just us but other guests too.”
“I thought such things were just urban legends…”
“…!”
While Hayun was stunned and speechless, Rin tilted her head calmly and asked me, “So what are you going to do now? Are you going to hand them over to the guards?”
“No, I’ve gotten a little curious about these guys, so I’m going to dig a bit deeper. But they’re tight-lipped.”
As I scratched the back of my head, the guys, except for the fainted old lady, opened their mouths in unison.
“We’ll talk!”
“No, we’ll tell everything! So please!”
“Please spare us!”
Thump! Thump! Thump!
With that, I stuffed my fist into their faces, and the noise fizzled out. In the solemn atmosphere, I shrugged and said to the two girls.
“See? They aren’t talking.”
“……”
“I felt this during the Zavalanco case too, but you can be quite scary sometimes.”
“They’re really determined ones.”
If you ask why, it’s because of all the gruesome sights I saw while checking out the hotel last night.
In the underground, there were corpses lined up as if they had been part of some experiment, and the secret passage smelled heavily of old blood.
Even the scratch marks left on the wall seemed like a plea for survival.
Forgiveness was out of the question.
“Anyway, all the guests have left, right? I’m closing the hotel today, and you guys keep an eye on things here. I’ll be back soon.”
“Where are you going?”
I replied, lightly shaking my hands at Hayun’s question.
“To find the guards.”
I stepped outside the hotel to look for the guy who recommended this place to us.
*
After Daniel stepped out of the hotel, Rin and Hayun decided to whip up a simple breakfast.
They found some bread, and as they nibbled and looked around the hotel, Rin suddenly felt nauseous and had to spit out the bread.
“……”
Especially after seeing the horrors in the basement, Rin tightened her lips and balled her fists, heading upstairs.
Feeling an unusual vibe, Hayun followed behind, anxious.
“I’ll just talk to those people for a bit.”
“Huh? Um, okay.”
Rin locked the counter door as she entered. Seeing her back, Hayun thought they really weren’t just childhood friends.
Inside, Rin looked at the four revived individuals and sighed in relief, casting a healing spell.
In that moment, the four were convinced.
“We just need to charm this kid.”
“Hey kid, look at this old lady. There was a reason we had to go through all this torture!”
“P-please spare us. We didn’t really want to do this!”
“That’s right! There’s a big boss behind it all. We had no choice!”
“Please tell your boyfriend about us! We beg you!”
“Boyfriend?”
Rin pondered the last statement with a small smile, and the four, who had barely survived, immediately began to shower her with compliments.
“I can tell a good couple when I see one; you two look perfect together.”
“Yeah, boyfriend! A match made in heaven!”
“We’re so sure you’ll get married! That would be so happy!”
“Imagine how cute the kids would be; you’re both so pretty and handsome!”
It’s hard to argue Rin could be called the epitome of beauty, but Daniel’s situation was a bit different.
At 28, he had rugged looks with scars that made him seem masculine; meanwhile, the 18-year-old Daniel was still timid and retained that ordinary look.
Sure, his gaze was sharper, but at a glance, the 18-year-old Daniel seemed perfectly normal.
“Do you think so?”
Rin’s face turned bright red as she struggled to respond.
Honestly, it twisted their insides to praise Daniel, the guy who had been beating them up and stabbing them.
But, what could they do? They had to survive.
Rin thanked them and healed all their wounds before casting a spell at the counter’s entrance.
“What kind of spell is this?”
“I don’t know how I would know.”
Suddenly, Rin started casting spells. Her group began to whisper amongst themselves. Still, they didn’t feel too uneasy, thinking Rin was just messing around until…
Suddenly, a fireball shot through the air and burned a guy.
“Ahhhhhh!”
His body was catching fire.
Everyone knows that few things hurt as badly as being burned, and though he screamed for help, he wasn’t dead yet.
What’s happening here?
As they inhaled the savory scent of roasting meat, the three remaining looked at Rin in shock, and dark, indistinct energy emanated from her as she stared down at them with dead eyes.
“I saw the basement.”
“……!”
“S-sorry! But I wasn’t trying to do that to you!”
“That’s right! We were forced into it!”
“Even if you didn’t want to, or if you were going to do that to me, it doesn’t matter.”
More fireballs rained down on them.
This time, another guy twisted his body in agony, but like the first, he didn’t die.
Rin’s frigid voice cut through their screams.
“But I won’t forgive you for trying to do that to Daniel.”
Another fireball fell, targeting the third guy.
Now only the old lady remained.
The old lady sensed something was off.
Why were they not dying? Why were they suffering in anguish instead?
Normally they should be dead by now. Sure, they were burning, crying out in pain, but they weren’t being scorched at all.
“If you’re going to do something to Daniel, I can’t just let that slide, right?”
As the fireball flew towards her, the old lady instinctively knew.
Those two were absolutely fated to be together.
*
While Rin was weakly displaying her power over the Army of Death, Daniel was also gripping a man’s collar tightly.
“Hey, you bastard. Who are you? Why did you recommend that hotel to us yesterday?”
The guard, startled by a boy suddenly leaping at him while he was diligently watching late into the night, could only be flustered.
“What’s this? What kind of pressure is this?”
He felt a wholly different aura than even from the captain of the guards. Was this truly killing intent coming from a boy? He didn’t have time to marvel.
I’m going to die.
He thought he might actually die, so he hurriedly opened his mouth.
“I just heard customers talking about how nice that hotel was!”
“……”
Daniel stared ominously into the guard’s eyes as if trying to gauge the truth.
Suddenly, he loosened his grip and nodded.
“Do you remember what the guests looked like?”
“W-well, there were just so many guests…”
“……”
“What’s wrong? Is there some problem with the hotel?”
“It’s closed down now. Don’t recommend it to anyone else.”
After giving him a light warning, Daniel turned away.
From the guard’s reaction, he didn’t seem to be lying.
‘Did that many people really recommend that hotel?’
From what I saw, hardly anyone who entered made it out alive.
‘Looks like I need to question those bastards.’
If my guess is right, that hotel might be linked to the Tudogs.
Like Hayun’s Cockatrice trick, or the guy with the Dopple Slime’s body that came along with her.
The hotel’s owner, the elderly lady, was a magical beast—the Death Spider—that lived in the Forest of the Demon Realm.
‘What the hell are they doing?’
It was uncertain.
I understood they were reaching out using the resources and magical beasts from the Forest of the Demon Realm.
If they could tap even a fraction of the power from there, it would definitely be feasible.
But the important thing is that, in my past life, I had no idea about the organization known as the Tudogs.
‘If they were active in the Forest of the Demon Realm, there’s no way I wouldn’t know.’
Of course, I could easily have missed a few things in the 3 to 4 years.
I was barely surviving at the entrance of the forest at that time.
But once I started to build a proper home deeper in the forest, things changed.
Back then, I surely would have known everyone who passed through the Forest of the Demon Realm.
‘So does that mean they disappeared within five years?’
If that’s the case, it makes sense.
If the Tudogs had vanished, it wouldn’t be strange that I wouldn’t be aware of it.
‘Huh?’
I spotted white hair peeking slightly from the rooftop.
“Looks like she doesn’t take a break.”
The girl from the Chokugen Faction, chasing the Tudogs more fervently than anyone, was peering down at me from the rooftop.
