Escape Room (1) - 57

A/N: I've changed a condition for the trial in the previous chapter, there will be no inventory and mana won't be able to be utilized for the next 10 floors.

There was some serious deja vu here.

I mean, I was pretty sure that this exact same scene happened in the webtoon.

Well, after a few seconds, the eye moved, and once again, darkness was the only thing I could see in the hole.

Taking my eyes off the hole, I proceeded to do the next thing on my list, which was to take of the clamp keeping my feet to the "floor".

Using my defined abs to hoist my body up, I bended over and started messing around with the clamps.

After about 30 minutes, I still wasn't able to take off the clamps, and it was pissing me off.

Like, my whole body was shaking by now and I had stopped feeling the burn in my abs, indicating that I was probably going to be in a lot of pain for the next few days after I slept tonight, or whenever the next time I could sleep was.

Well, anyways, I let myself hang for a few minutes before bending myself over again and starting to try and figure out the clamp's mechanism again.

Finally, after 1 fucking hour of destroying my abs, I was able to get the clamps off.

And, guess, what? I literally just had to press one button, which fucking pissed me off!

Of course, there had been like 100 false levers and buttons that I had tried to pull and press in different combinations, but still, in the end, after all that hard work, I literally only had to press one button to release myself.

"Click!"

Hearing this, I immediately braced myself by putting my hands over my head, and using my arms like springs, lessening the impact of my fall.

Lowering my body down, I was finally able to stand up the "right" way, working with gravity now instead of against it.

After giving myself a few minutes to rest my abs, I started looking around the room again.

And, now that everything was upside down, it looked drastically different.

Well, the first thing I did was go to the pipes that led "up" from the furnace, and started climbing them to reach the actual furnace.

Finally reaching the furnace, I reached up and opened the furnace door.

And, well, although I was expecting a bunch of ash to fall onto my face, it apparently didn't, as the ash stuck to the bottom of the furnace and didn't fall down, so some magic must have been holding it up.

Sticking my hand into the furnace, I moved my hand around, searching the dusty interior.

I found a switch and immediately clicked it.

"AHHHHHHHHH!"

Judging by the screams resounding from a room close by, it seemed like I had just accidentally killed a person.

But, in return, the room I was in had started to heat up, by a lot.

'Shit, so it's a heat trap!'

Judging by how fast the heat in the room was rising, I knew that I had a mere 10 minutes to escape the room before the heat would consume and melt everything in the room.

And this was starting to worry me.

After all, I had a horribly dangerous habit of not being able to complete these challenges until the last minute during the beta tests.

'Sigh, well, better get started.'

I had already taken my hand out of the furnace as the heat coming from it was already too intense for my body to handle, and the pipes that I was on were warming up too, so I quickly jumped down.

Running over to the place under the couch bed, I jumped up and tore it open.

Finding nothing, I grabbed the bottom of the couch and completely ripped the whole thing from the ceiling.

I shredded the whole thing apart in a whirlwind of cotton, but found nothing.

Looking back up, I saw a word inscribed in the ceiling, along with a stick with a hook at the end of it.

I quickly read the word, which was, "Salute" and committed it to my memory.

Afterwards, I jumped up and ripped the small stick with a hook at the end of it off the ceiling.

Looking at the stick, and how the diameter was about as big as one of the holes in the wall, I knew what I had to do.

Avoiding the creepy hole that the eye had peered through, I instead stuck the stick with the hook first through the other hole.

Tilting it a little bit and poking around, the hook finally hit a string.

Hooking the hook around it, I carefully and delicately pulled the string towards me.

As it reached the hole, I saw some shiny brass on the other side.

"The key!"

But, my hopes were dashed when I kept pulling, and then realized that the string didn't extend the key all the way to the hole.

Not knowing what to do, and with the room getting hotter and hotter with each second, I panicked.

But then miraculously, the string lengthened.

"Click!"

Hearing this, I immediately felt relieved, and quickly pulled the string and then the key through.

But, as I fell on the floor, butt first, I couldn't help but notice something.

The bloodshot, pale eye was looking through the other hole again, and nearly gave me a heart attack!

Well, it didn't matter anymore anyways, so I quickly got off my bottom and ran to the place under the stairs which led to the door.

Using the railing as a sort of climbing rope, I climbed "down" the stairs before reaching the door.

Once again, using my abs to bend over, I put the key in, turned it, and unlocked the door.

I opened the door, which disappeared into darkness.

"Creeeeeaaaaaaaakkkk!"

Hoisting myself up, I successfully escaped the first room in the sector.