Chapter 453 - Housekeeping (Patreon)

The group was in one of the cube-shaped rooms. Everyone was looking around, trying to find rooms that should be vacant so they could stay there.

"Do we really have to be in such a rush?" Alex asked.

"Yes! We don't know how much time we have until the Housekeeper shows up. It's better for us to find a place and then stay there. Then we have an actual time frame to work with," Helena was moving around the walls of the large area with her shadow tentacles.

Blue was using Stormcloud to do something similar, creating a small flying nimbus to move around. Unfortunately, even with the pieces of cloud that she got from the Sky Ruler hard mode, this spell wouldn't work with multiple people just yet.

Bonnie was just looking around with Hera by her side. The explorer made a motion as if she was about to throw a javelin and said, "Yeet!" tossing the non-existing projectile in the air. At the same time, her entire court, including Ooze, the new member, went flying to the top of this large area. Hera only gave them a single order, to find a vacant room, and the blades were already working on it.

"Really? Yeet?" Bonnie rolled her eyes.

"What? I'm trying to find a good way to call them, but until then, I'll have some fun with this," Hera shrugged.

With everyone's efforts combined, it didn't take long for them to find one of the vacant rooms. However, it wasn't in this particular area. Only after going across a corridor that was just 10 meters long to another one of those large cube-shaped areas filled with several doors around the walls that they find it. On the 2nd row, there was a single door that was already open, which also meant that it was a vacant room, according to Helena.

The problem was actually entering the room. There were a few moving platforms that would go from side to side, and to get on top of it, they would have to climb down the other platforms jumping from floor to floor. Another option was just to jump down, but it would be a four stories fall, and there was a chance of missing the target. Alex and Blue didn't have any trouble getting there. The assassin had her wind chaser, which allowed her to move quickly to the target of any of her attacks, while Blue could use Stormcloud as she had been using since the beginning. Helena also had an easy, even if not quick, way to get there by using her tentacles, but she couldn't carry someone else like that. It was one thing if they were moving through the ground, but going up and down walls was much more complicated.

Suddenly, a roar echoed through the hotel. It wasn't a simple battle cry of a monster. It was a roar of anger in frustration, something that shook everyone's body to the very core and resonated with the moments in life when they had to work with something that they really didn't want to. They all looked back and saw the Housekeeper.

By all accounts, they were looking at a  minotaur, or at least a version of one. It had eight large horns, two on the top of her head and another six coming from her neck and spine, massive bulging muscular arms with small spikes coming from the elbows, a cow-like face, and a large golden ring on her nose. Her eyes glowed red like the fire from a forge in contrast with the long braided hair that came down from the sides of her head. She was pushing a cart filled with cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and other amenities that one might need to restock in a hotel and wearing a long maid apron covering its hooves, complete with the cloth maid tiara.

The Housekeeper turned to the group and started walking toward them with an angry stare, leaving her cart behind. Each step made the ground rumble, and this noise coming from her nose became louder and louder as flames began to jet out with each exhale.

"Go, go, go, go, go, go, go," Helena pushed everyone to move faster while she was jumping from the high floor towards the empty room, "I can send my shadows to get one of you when I'm there."

Alex sent off a wind blade and quickly appeared inside the room while Blue was floating, trying to figure out what she could do to help. Her clouds weren't exactly quick to make, and since she was on top of her flying nimbus, there was no way that she could create another cloud to sustain a person. Hera didn't like the idea of leaving Bonnie here alone, so she decided on another course of action. She quickly pulled up her Griffon Whistle that was always with her even when she wasn't using it and called Nimbus to her side. She told the cloud Griffon to carry Bonnie towards the door while she was going to jump and hoped that her shoes' gliding effect and Daskka's mist would help cushion her fall.

Everything happened too fast. Bonnie didn't even have a chance to complain about the suggestion, and she was already on top of the Griffin gliding towards the door. Hera glanced back towards the Housekeeper, ''the monster was already halfway through the corridor they had just come through. Without hesitating, she jumped down while asking her blades to help her get to the door. The order came in a weird situation, and her blades were too far away to reach her in time. As they were heading down, Daskka took the form of her giant mist snake to try to carry Hera, but her shape wasn't solid enough. The explorer fell through the mist without stopping at all. She tried to raise a stone wall from the ground, but her spell didn't have anything to take hold of. Apparently, the floor of the hotel wasn't made out of stone. She started accelerating when something came to mind. Hera quickly activated her fire elemental armor to try to focus the flames on her feet and at the palm of her hands that were now pointing down. Hoping that it will be enough trust to push her up or at least slow her down.

She ended up hitting the floor with a loud noise. Her knees buckled with the impact, and she could feel something being pushed to the very limit in her body. Jumping five stories down filled her with adrenaline and that was still coursing through her body when she hit the ground, allowing her to ignore both of her sprained ankles while she ran towards the wall right under the door. Arriving there, she tried to climb up using the wavy texture of the walls as footing. Even if it was working, she could feel her fingers hurting with the weight forced onto them. She was halfway there when she felt some shadowy tentacles grab her body to assist her climb. Helena was already getting close to the door, and she was close enough to help Hera at the same time. Her shadow tendrils couldn't carry more than one person vertically, but they were strong enough to lessen the strain on Hera's body.

The Housekeeper had jumped from the corridor and was now on the bottom of the floor, creating a small crater with the impact before letting out another roar, but the movement seemed to have stunned it for a moment, giving the group more time to reach the room. Thankfully, Hera managed to enter the dorm room just a few moments after the Housekeeper reached the bottom floor before it even started moving again. Even so, she ended up being the last one, everyone else was already inside, waiting for her to enter, and they closed the door as soon as possible. Ooze, who was one of the blades that were farther away, was the last one to enter. Hera considered just dismissing the weapon, but she didn't want to waste mana doing that and the Housekeeper wasn't close enough to be a threat.

Helena let out a sigh of relief with the door closed, "Wow, that was close."

"Yeah. I don't wanna do that again," Hera slumped on the floor, noticing now that there was some sand on the ground.

The room they were in, if this could be called a room, was actually a beach with a small island on the horizon. There were some hammocks, a plastic table with two beach chairs around it, and a wardrobe that seemed to be made out of straw.

"Is this normal?" Blue asked while looking around.

"Nothing about this place is normal. But if you're asking about showing up somewhere that's completely unrelated to where we just were, yeah, it's normal," Helena nodded, "On the table, there should be a piece of paper telling us the mission. Or somewhere where there should be a piece of paper or something with writing on it. Maybe inside the wardrobe."

"OK, let's see it… Ouch," Hera tried to get up, but she felt her ankles sprained now that the adrenaline was wearing out.

"Here, let me help you," Alex helped Hera up and took her to one of the hammocks. The ability to glide through the floor ended up helping a lot to push her along.

At the same time, Blue walked up to the table and saw a note on top of it, "OK… it seems like the test here is to reach that island and bring back a flag that's on the beach. Who wants to go swimming?"

"That's not the best idea. If we swim and the next room we go into is about cold or electricity, that might be a big problem for us," Bonnie said.

"I guess you have a point. But how are we gonna get the flag?" Blue asked while still flying on top of her cloud.

"Are you seriously asking that?" Bonnie pointed down.

Blue glanced at the ground and realized that she was flying. She never tried to cover long distances, but it was worth a shot, "I'm still getting used to this; I might have to take a break on the other side to rest up. If that happens, can anyone come to pick me up?"

"Nimbus might be able to. But we're gonna have to wait a few minutes for his cooldown," Hera explained while rubbing her ankles. She dismissed the mount as soon as they went inside the room to avoid causing any problems. The issue now was how to fix her feet. Not being able to think of anything else, she started humming the Luminous Light Litany to help her heal. Daskka joined in, and her blades made a circle around Hera and Alex while they also seemed to participate in the spell, but instead of singing, they seemed to be dancing.

That triggered an unexpected effect. The litany became much stronger than what she expected from the amount of mana she was using. Even if her blades were taking some of her mana away, making her spend almost triple the amount she intended, the spell seemed to be at least four times more effective than if she was using it on her own. The process lasted for about 5 minutes. During that time, Hera noticed the ticking clock above the door. When they arrived, it had 7 minutes on the clock, and by the end of it, there were only two minutes left. Another thing she noticed was that the tide was slowly advancing. It was still very far from the furniture and even farther from the door, but the limit seemed to be related to that.

Blue also returned while Hera recovered, with the red flag on hand. It was one of those that you would find on a golf course. However, there was no notification or sign showing that they had completed the test. According to Helena, that was how things went. They would either get the extra time or not. When the clock finally reached 0, it turned green and started counting up again, but instead of starting from 0, it began at 13.

"That's not much time. My suggestion is for us to stay here to have at least half an hour. Then we can really make some progress. We could divide our time into 20 minutes of searching for our room and 10 minutes of searching for any room just so we have enough not to be too close to the Housekeeper," Helena's suggestion was accepted by everyone, and they all just sat down and waited. Lucky for them, even after the timer reached 30 minutes, the waves barely got close to the furniture.

Since they were all feeling restless already, the group was by the door, watching the clock change from 29 minutes. As soon as it did, Helena opened the door and they moved outside. To everyone's surprise. They were no longer in the second row of a cube area but in a massive cylindrical room with a spiral slope. In the center of this place, there was a pillar made out of several hundred, if not thousands, of doors leading to different rooms.

"What do we do now?" Blue asked.

"The easiest way would be to find a statue. Or to find our room. What was the number again?" Helena turned to the controller.

"8592B."

They all looked back to the door just came from, and the room number was 246D, the one to their left was 124893A, and the one to the right was room number 2V. This didn't make any sense, and there was no way to figure something out. Not wanting to waste any time, Hera and Helena set up an alarm on their tablets for 20 minutes, and they all started moving.