Escaping the Mystery Hotel

[User: ▢▢▢▢▢▢

Date: ▢▢

Current Location: Floor 1, Room 103 (Cursed Room – Athanasia’s Human Farm)

Sage’s Advice: 3]

Standing still, I blankly gazed at people.

Inside large and white structures that were too enormous for my eyes to take in were those beings that we had considered as ‘monsters’ – white giants with multiple tentacles busily walking around. 

There were tons of incomprehensible machines. Some appeared like huge smartphones, while others weren’t even in a tangible shape.

But there was one thing that was common.

All the giants were wearing a silver bracelet in one of their tentacles. A change occurred to humans whenever their silver bracelets flickered ominously.

Those were probably the tools that allowed them to control humans. 

Within the areas divided by the massive structures, I could see people. Everyone was wearing something like a restrictive choker and was each living inside their own illusion.

They were probably assigned a ‘human role’ at the start inside their illusion. After having their souls slowly sucked out, they would in the end be stuck in the body of a beast, and later be consumed as an animal that had less intellect than a microbe. 

In front of my eyes was a world where humans had literally become a resource.

Now, I couldn’t even exactly remember what happened on the last day at the Animal Farm. All I remembered was that everything crumbled down, with our petty rebellion vanishing into nothing from one sweep of the giant’s hands.

How nice would it have been if I died with them?

At least I wouldn’t have had to suffer the things that I was going through right now.

The cow, pig, cat, dog, snake, wolf and rat – everyone shattered down and were each allocated a ‘new role’.

And only the goose was able to escape that accursed circulation.

The one that took me outside was a white giant.

Only after a fair bit of time did I notice that he was called ‘Theodus’ by his comrades. While resetting the farm, Theodus took me, and only me, outside.

Why?

I couldn’t ask the giant because I couldn’t speak nor hold any type of communication with the giant, so I endlessly pondered by myself and came up with a hypothesis.

‘Affinity’.

The blessing I received at the Hotel.

The Blessing of Affinity deterred those strange monkeys from attacking me on the first day and this time, it made these soul-sucking monsters hold goodwill towards me.

The thoughts going through the mind of the giant was… probably similar to that of an owner of a poultry farm, finding a chicken that looked especially cute and taking it outside to raise as a pet. Humans ate chicken all the time, and thousands of baby chickens were sent to the grinder for maceration everyday, but there were also a lot of people who raised pet chickens.

Even humans were such complex beings with many faces, so there was no way that these giants, who were clearly superior to humans, would be any simpler.

From what I could understand, that was the only thing I could say.

‘Fortunately’ – I should say – Theodus did not harass me or abuse me in any way. Instead, he treated me like a cute pet and tapped my head a few times while walking by, and by the time I realised it, some of the other giants also started doing the same thing.

Both water and food weren’t supplied in a humiliating way – there was always a mediocre energy bar and a cup of water. 

To be fair, that was to be expected because I was most probably a pet. Not many people would take out a chicken from a poultry farm just to abuse it.

If all of this was thanks to the blessing I received at the Hotel, then I must have been very lucky to receive such an amazing blessing.

—- BBIIIIIK

An alarm rang across the entire building.

Now, I knew what that sound meant.

The silver bracelets of the giants roaming around the structures gave out a white lustre, as countless humans that were each immersed in their own worlds and their illusions walked out.

Even though they were walking outside–

They were still immersed in their own illusions.

Their minds were submerged in an endless world of fantasy and yet their bodies were moving, and waiting to be ‘harvested’.

Time went by as a gray and bizarre giant appeared.

Most of the other giants were in a humanoid shape with a few tentacles instead of arms but that gray thing had no legs and nothing but countless tentacles. 

Its appearance of having nothing but an innumerable number of tentacles and a body made it resemble a brittle starfish that was multiplied by a million times.

What in the world was that thing?

Why was that existence the only one that was so different from the other giants?

Even the ‘Teacher’ did not know about it. To be fair, ‘Teacher’s’ circumstances weren’t fundamentally too different from mine.

He was just locked in this facility for an incomparably longer period of time than me, which was why he knew a lot more than I did.

The tentacles exuded out and pierced through the heads of the humans.

I almost cried when I saw that the first time, but it was just intriguing at this point.

They were stabbing through the heads, so why wasn’t there a single drop of blood? 

And the only thing inside a person’s head should be the brain… So how were those tentacles able to take out ‘that thing’?

That thing.

A white cluster of something.

At a glance, it looked like a small cloud, and at another glance it also appeared like a shiny stone.

Appearance-wise, it appeared like something strange that had the mixed attributes of a solid, liquid and gas substance.

‘Fragment of Rationality’, ‘The Joint of the Soul and the Body’

That was what Teacher called it.

It was endlessly complicated when put that way, but simply put, having that thing repeatedly taken out would squeeze dry the intellect of a human and make their thinking capabilities closer to that of a microbe over time.

That appeared to be why the giants of this world, the ‘Athanasias’ were domesticating people. 

Actually, there appeared to be several other farms where other intellectual beings aside from humans were being squeezed dry, but I had never been to those places. The only places I went to were the human farm and the basement (I decided to call it the basement).

If I was by myself, I would have never been able to discover what everything was.

In fact, I knew nothing until Teacher told me about them.

Rationality was constantly sucked out of humans that were still intellectual, and the humans that were becoming less productive due to their intellect being lowered to that of an animal were ‘disposed of’. I blankly watched all that happen in front of my eyes.

For how long was I supposed to watch this thing?

Time flew without an end.

I didn’t even know how many days went by at this point. I had been keeping count until Day 10 but…

This white desert with nothing but white spots of light was a hell full of apathetic humans, and counting the date was another source of pain so I gave up before long. 

— Vuiiinnggg

The machine gave out a humming noise. I was quite used to hearing it now – Theodus would always come after that noise.

Ah, finally.

The only reason I was able to keep my sanity within this hell was because there was one target I could communicate with.

It was time to meet Teacher.

There was something I’ve been curious about whenever we were going to the basement.

Firstly, I didn’t even know if it indeed was the basement but putting that aside, how in the world did these Athanasias move? 

The silver bracelet at the end of Theodus’s tentacle sparkled and I was already at a different place.

From what I have observed thus far, that silver bracelet had the function of controlling the mind of an intellectual being like a human.

In other words, that meant Theodus was always momentarily putting my mind to sleep before moving places.

So in that sense, I had no way of knowing where I was, but the reason I called it the basement was because this place was always dark.

Aside from one dim source of light, there was nothing else lighting up this vast and expansive area.

More than 20 Athanasias were messing around with large machines that were too complicated for my mind to understand.

In the middle of the room was something like a large water tank.

And inside…

There was something overwhelmingly huge that even made those white giants appear tiny. The white giants were around 6-8 metres tall, whereas that thing inside the water tank was probably at least 50 metres long.

With my eyes, I just couldn’t fathom how enormous it was.

But nonetheless, it was beautiful.

Something I thought of every time I saw, was that Teacher was an unbelievably beautiful organism.

The dim source of light brightening up this room was in fact none other than Teacher’s body itself.

He was like a tremendously enormous whale having countless crystals with shining fragments floating around. In the outer regions of his body, some mysterious organisms continued appearing and being sucked back inside.

Rather than one organism, he appeared like a small universe.

The circulation of an endless loop of life and death.

With my lacking descriptions, I had no way of explaining the sight in front of my eyes.

However, it was simply beautiful.

The existence before me appeared like the most beautiful organism in the entire world. For 30 seconds, I blankly stared at the only source of light existing in this world of pain.

And that was when I heard a ‘voice’.

Child… You are here again.

Yes. Teacher. I’m here to see you.

Did you have to swim through another torrent of pain?

I saw more people being squeezed to death without an end.

The pain shall not last forever. Endure and be patient. 

As long as you wait without letting them discover your recovered intellect, the rightful time shall come.

The recovery of my intellect. 

To be fair, it was more correct to say that my intellect was no longer being sucked out. I realised only after meeting Teacher, but the extraction of my intellect being stopped was actually nothing but a coincidence.

Back when I was a goose at the farm, when the farmer was trying to pluck my feathers, my restrictive choker was slightly broken due to reasons which stopped the extraction process. It was similar to a chicken in the poultry farm not laying any more eggs, so why wasn’t I disposed of? That was something which I still wasn’t sure about.

More importantly… When exactly would all this suffering come to an end?

When? When would that day be? I always think to myself. Are these beings the devils or the gods? 

With one gesture, they play with the minds of humans and lock them in a prison of illusion forever so how would I ever escape from these giants?

In the eyes of a chicken, the eagle is like a god and a human is like a god in the eyes of a dog. 

Your salvation is near. For now, just take a rest and go to sleep. 

———————-Ahh

My eyes suddenly turned heavy as soon as I heard those words.

While going to sleep, I prayed that my last bit of hope may be realised.

I prayed that I may escape this farm of pain and meet everyone else again…