005 The Hotel Abyss (1)

1.

Omni

coin

throw

it

away

As soon as I read the dying message, my memories came flooding back.

Run 1.

After spending some heated time with the eight-foot-tall widow Ceres, in the bedroom.

'I wasn't originally planning to give you this much... but you entertained me.'

'It's been a while since I had this much fun. I'll add a service fee on top of your sister's price.'

Ceres placed an exquisitely shimmering Omni-coin in my hand.

I giggled to myself and headed for the Big Dick office, where I was beheaded and died.

Run 2.

SSR Joker, the sack that God dropped. My slum apartment.

'Kyaaaah-hoo!'

'So all of this is Omni-coins? I'm glad I came to this other world!'

I took the Omni-coin out of the sack and kissed it over and over.

I carried the grinning Arbel on my back and passed under the overpass, where I was brutally murdered.

Right.

In both runs 1 and 2.

About three hours after I got the Omni-coin in my hands, that woman came looking for me.

The puzzle blocks in my head rattled as cause and effect clicked into place.

I had been mistaken all along.

It wasn't Ceres's tip-off, nor Isis's divine aura.

The Grim Reaper came after I obtained the Omni-coin.

And the dying message that came to me was, 'Throw away the Omni-coin.'

'Damn it, if you don't know, you get hit, huh?!'

There's no trap this exquisitely perfect.

I dumped the Omni-coin in this stink-soaked gutter and it became a death flag?

I was about to have my life fucked up right then and there, and I was supposed to hold back from picking it up to survive?

Even if a hundred Lee Dae-hos who lost everything came charging at me with bats, I'd still try to steal one base.

What a joke.

'Hoo....'

I forced myself to calm down.

I still don't know what kind of gimmick this is.

Whether merely touching the Omni-coin is enough to trigger disaster, or whether just being near it lets them pin down my location.

Even so, the latter probably isn't it.

Still, it's not all bad.

If I score it logically, objectively, and quantitatively, it's about average.

Still, because I didn't have the dying message, I kept overlooking the fact that 'Omni-coin = a one-way ticket to the afterlife'?

To put it a little cutely....

'Wow! It's an Omni-coin! Now I can eat warm grub with this!' - swish - 'Eek! Who snitched on me!' - maybe I'd gone through that about four times.

Above all, I don't have time to feel wronged.

Arbel will be coming to the apartment a week from now.

In-season Arbel is all about freshness, but three days after delivery she goes bad.

At the very least, if I want to keep my life line attached, I have to save up money and see Isis by then.

'First, check the current situation.'

First, the relics.

'Sturdy Stomach' and 'Eye of Laplace.'

They were still on the relic display shelf even after regression.

Jokers.

'Coin Toss of Truth (2/3), Polite-Speech Coupon (1/1), Copy of the Sutra of Mystic Insect Sounds (妙法蟲聲經) (1/1), Curse-Repelling Talisman (4/5).'

Modern items were still in stock except for Jjapagetti and cigarettes, but the Hero and the Armani coat I hadn't put in my inventory had vanished.

I only had 12 pt left.

If I were to restock the troubleshooter's symbolic coat, Hero, and plenty of ammo, I might as well call it 0 pt.

'I'm going out of my mind.'

I felt like I was being crushed by this gloomy situation.

But then I remembered the Omni-coin sack that sparkled in this room, and the bitch who had split Arbel clean in half right before my eyes.

A flame of revenge that can't be extinguished burned in my chest.

'I'm letting you off for now, but just you wait until next time.'

I'm definitely going to get my hands on some kind of hypnosis app.

I've even got a polite-speech coupon; why wouldn't there be a common-sense-altering app?

Wash yourself clean and wait.

I'll show you just how far human dignity can be dragged down....

'No, wait.'

As I steeled myself, I realized this run had a serious contradiction.

1) For some reason, the Omni-coin acts as a transmitter.

2) To treat Arbel, I need the Omni-coin.

If I combine those conditions, one important question comes up.

Q: If Arbel is treated with the Omni-coin alone, does that crazy woman get summoned?

A: Ah.

That's what it means.

If Arbel is also a tracking target, and Arbel's tracking is possible through the Omni-coin....

Isn't that basically untreatable?

Still, it's too hard to abandon Arbel.

How much effort has already gone into this baggage, and I'm supposed to cut my losses here?

Absolutely not!

Arbel is only undervalued right now; fundamentally, she's a promising prospect capable of a ridiculous surge and rebound.

She's a shard of my ideal.

At this point, I'm going to keep averaging down forever.

Therefore, this run's objectives are....

1) Farm points. If possible, achievements that also give relic coupons.

2) Treat Arbel until she wakes up and gather information about that crazy woman.

3) If possible, treat Arbel with the Omni-coin and verify whether the crazy woman comes or not.

Those three.

'Let's do it, then.'

God still has 4 free deaths left.

2.

It started exactly the same as last run.

First I bought the coat with the remaining points and restocked Hero and its ammo.

I wandered the slum alleys, robbing robbers to make seed money.

'Register as a rank 9 troubleshooter?'

'Yes.'

'Name.'

'Gatsu.'

'5,000 Bios.'

'Here.'

'That coat looks nice?'

I registered as a rank 9 troubleshooter with that money.

I tweaked my name a bit to fit this run's playstyle.

In my opinion, big brother John Wick seems a little weak.

-BANG!

'THIS IS DEMOCRACY!!!!'

'What the fuck!'

'Long time no see! Are you two still playing poker?'

With a textbook door breach, I became the boss of the Get Money office.

Naturally, Akit and Arung didn't remember me, so they came at me hostile.

-Bang!

'Hey, from today on, you're my part-timers.'

'Yes, yes, we'll do whatever you say....'

'Big brother, what should we do from now on...?'

In front of Hero's overwhelming force, they rolled over and acknowledged me as number one in the hierarchy.

Up to here it's the same as the previous run, but from here there's a difference.

This run, I won't be sticking to back-end requests.

'We're going into a rift.'

'A rift? We already have a pile of subcontracted back-end jobs. There are easy, comfortable jobs, so why do we have to go there?'

'Brother Gatsu! Places like that are for real experts or bastards who'll starve to death tomorrow!'

'Wow... you really hit the core.'

That's a perfectly rational opinion.

I don't really want to go either.

I heard rifts are insanely dangerous despite the juicy rewards, so I've never set foot in one until now.

Put another way, it's a pure white snowfield I've never once stepped on.

Meaning every crunchy step will latch on challenge objectives and achievement farming.

You need points if you want to roll gacha.

Even now, thinking about how I failed to properly snag an SSR and had to puke it back up makes my teeth grind....

[ 7 7 7 ]

[ JACKPOT!!!! ]

[ CONGRATULATIONS!!!! ]

[ SUPER SUPER RARE!!!!! ]

The dopamine rush back then was for real....

'Shut your mouth and pack the gear.'

'I don't wanna go! I don't wanna gooo!'

'Waaah, Mom, Mommm!!!'

There was a little resistance, but in front of a gun, everyone is equal.

I packed only simple gear and set out right away.

'Why, why do we have to go into a rift...'

'I don't wanna die... hurrr....'

'Quit crying! Big brother will make you Jjapagetti later.'

Then what is a rift?

The space covered in black ash becomes extremely distorted.

Time and physical laws twist, providence and causality collapse, and it turns into a state of complete chaos; this is called the Void (Void).

The reason humanity clusters together inside ark cities, or only in newly settled cities outside the walls, is also because of the Void.

If you go into the Void, even decent mages turn into ㅁ ㅏ ㅂ ㅓ ㅂ ㅅ ㅏ.

But sometimes a singularity occurs inside the Void, and a new pocket world is born where rules different from the world apply....

This is the 'rift.'

It's difficult and complicated, but roughly speaking, to me,

'Void = an unimplemented bug-ridden terrain. Users go in and get NULL'd. Sometimes veteran players go in here too.'

'Rift = a field dungeon with separate rules applied. You can grind monsters for money. A troubleshooter grinder.'

That's about how I understood it.

There are several ways to go into a rift, but first I headed to the hotel in District C-18.

Right.

It's a hotel.

3.

If C Sector's identity is the unlucky Kowloon Walled City,

the identity of C-18 District can be summed up in one word.

'The Hotel Abyss.'

A 25-story hotel tower rises in the center of the district, creating a sense of wrongness, and every place in the district is commercial real estate built around that imposing landmark.

There are large offices where high-rank troubleshooters gather,

an atelier that crafts, sells, and enhances artifacts,

a mill that refines 'gold sand (砂金),' the raw material used to forge Omni-coins,

and a Twilight Resource Development brokerage that handles keepsakes, corpses, and loot.

That's because The Hotel Abyss isn't just an inn, but a hub where hundreds of rift portals are gathered!

Ghost Story Hotel really is a masterpiece....

'Stop mixing genres already. At this rate, you're even going to bring up the gallery.'

'Yes?'

'What.'

'Ah, no.'

I gave the bewildered Akit a quick smack on the back of the head and kept heading for the hotel.

As I drew closer to the skyscraper, troubleshooters who looked rough as hell were everywhere.

Every last one of them had a gaze and gear that were no joke, and above all, they were neatly dressed.

There was even a woman walking around in a flashy qipao.

I looked away.

A woman strolling around in this rapist city in a qipao that leaves her thighs fully exposed?

That means she's either from one of the three families that dominate Overnus Pharmaceuticals, a mage, or the top product of a brothel that simps line up for.

The moment I tried to hit on her, I'd be off deep-kissing Arbel within three seconds.

Sure enough, the fluttering skirt hem was embroidered with the golden carp emblem of the Gold Carp family.

'Mm.'

I hunched my shoulders so I wouldn't look too cocky and walked with my eyes dutifully lowered.

And so I arrived at the Western-style hotel entrance, which didn't suit the Chinese-flavored C Sector at all.

The moment I stepped into the hotel lobby, my mouth fell open.

'Wow.'

It already looked glossy enough from the outside.

It might not be taller than Ceres's manor, but this was a hotel built up from the ground to more than twenty stories.

In Necropolis, where most buildings don't even go past five floors, it was worthy of being called a skyfucker.

But I never imagined the inside would be this much of another world.

'Wow, this is fucking insane.'

When I stood there with my mouth hanging open and looked around, Arung asked cautiously.

'Brother Gatsu, don't tell me... is this your first time in a hotel?'

'Yeah, this is badass.'

'Waaah... fuck, we're doomed....'

I ignored them and looked around the lobby.

So this really isn't my beloved London, but fucking Necropolis?

Just beyond a single swing door at the hotel front that had looked like a bustling market, there was no stinging smog or noisy shouting.

Instead, soft classical music flowed through the air.

The citrus scent of a lemon-oil diffuser and the leather smell of well-maintained furniture.

And the high ceiling with glittering brass ornaments everywhere and a gigantic chandelier hanging from it, too.

How should I put it.

It reminded me of old times.

The hotel I stayed at while traveling in London.

A place with a 150-year-old restaurant on the first floor, and a racist waiter who would never seat Asians by the window even when there were empty seats....

The kind of historic luxury five-star hotel I'm talking about.

Of course, seeing the troubleshooters huddled on the sofas made me realize this wasn't Britain.

-Ding!

A notification popped up.

======

::: New Area Entered (NEW!):::

A gate leading toward the abyss.

The oldest 'rift' in Necropolis.

Welcome to 'The Hotel Abyss'!

A marble floor that glittered like a mirror.

The lovely light of the giant chandelier flickering from the ceiling.

Friendly and well-trained veteran staff.

Immaculate room conditions 365 days a year, plus a variety of flashy amenities!

This is the final resting place and terminus for those setting out into the rift.

Ah, check-in is free, but please note that check-out is not guaranteed.

Then I wish you luck, guest.

*** TIP ***

- Please be sure to follow the hotel visitor rulebook. This is not a recommendation.

======

A sigh escaped me as I read the last line.

'Rulebook? Damn, they mixed in everything.'

What kind of world mixes settings with this much disregard for its foundation?

This is the kind of world that would make even a mutt puke.

'Arung, what's the rulebook this time?'

'As you can probably tell, rules also apply here because this is a rift. It's basically a handbook that organizes what you mustn't do.'

'Where do I look at it?'

'Right over there, sir.'

Arung pointed to the concierge desk on one side of the hotel lobby and said.

'But the rules aren't anything special, so you don't really need to look at it.'

'Let's take a look anyway.'

I pulled out the densely packed rulebook.

Then.

'……?'

I flinched when I saw the employee sitting at the concierge desk.

An immaculate, flawless suit. A concierge badge.

Glasses perched on a long, sharply angled nose bridge, horns curved backward.

Horizontally flat rectangular pupils.

'…….'

'…….'

How had I not noticed this until now?

This was a hotel, after all. Naturally, hotel employees existed here like part of the background.

But....

The bellboy carrying luggage, the receptionist handing out room keys at the check-in counter.

Even the concierge sitting neatly in front of me with his head bowed.

All of them.

Had goat heads.