Chapter 2814: Phantom Murder Room (Four)

"PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD!"

When Peter's agonized scream came through the communication, Shiller sighed. As a Saint Heir, Peter was nearly perfect, but if there had to be a flaw pointed out, it was that his Sanity Points maximum was a bit low, so even at full, they could easily deplete.

Sanity Points are not about courage, Peter actually was not lacking in courage, but he was deficient in the ability to rationalize the magical mysteries into logical thoughts. Give him a wooden stake, and he could smack it loudly, but if you blow a gust of wind at him, he could not handle it, as Spider Man simply was not good at dealing with these supernatural enemies.

Under Peter's somewhat panicked description, Shiller knew that a person had just moved into room 1904 across from him, a young man wearing a jacket, who, before entering, flashed a psychopathic smile reminiscent of a sadistic killer towards room 1905.

Indeed, if that person had come charging and slamming his fists against the door, Peter would definitely have burst out to return the favor. But the man didn't move; he just stood there at the doorway, smiling. Peter was scared enough to not even dare to open his door now.

As expected, relying on such a person to explore was not feasible, Shiller would have to do it himself, but before heading out, he needed to set a target first.

In the best-case scenario, he could make it to the lobby, get the guest list, and figure out what exactly was going on, but to Shiller, that seemed difficult, so he also set a secondary target to avoid coming back empty-handed.

Shiller's target was room 1900.

Why here, one might ask? Please, this is a hotel, which floor of a hotel doesn't start with room 01? What's the deal with 00? It's not like we are coding!

This room 1900 definitely was fishy. It was the closest to the elevator on the right side of the corridor, but due to the angle, even when Shiller opened the door, he could only see half of the doorplate, unable to spot any traces in front of the door like with room 1904 across the hall. To gather clues, Shiller must leave from room 1905.

Shiller glanced at his watch; he had checked in around 10:00, and now it was 10:45. He suspected that something might happen around midnight, so he had about an hour and fifteen minutes left.

Shiller opened the door a bit wider. The lights in the hallway were still on, dim as most hotel lights are, but not showing any obvious issues.

He didn't hear the elevator moving; this confirmed that there were no new guests above his floor.

Good, it was safe for now. Shiller opened the door, sidestepped through the crack, took a flashlight but did not turn it on, and tiptoed along the right wall towards the elevator.

The footprints at the doorway of room 1904 were still there. Since the corridor was also lit, it was impossible to tell by the light whether there was any movement inside. There was no noise from room 1903 next to room 1905, and room 1902 was also quiet.

Just as Shiller reached opposite room 1901, he suddenly heard a loud "bang."

Shiller stopped immediately, stood still against the wall, and looked toward room 1901 from which the noise came. Following that was another bang, then two more bangs. It didn't sound like someone was hitting the door; rather, it sounded like someone was throwing something against it.

Shiller quickly moved closer, bent down, and peeked through the gap under the door.

A pair of feet standing by the door.

Those feet were very close to the door; no doubt, this person's nose must have been pressed against the door panel.

What was hitting the door?

Bang!

Another bang came, and suddenly a drop of liquid dripped down the door panel, which might be blood, but there was no bloody smell.

Bang bang!

His head was hitting the door; Shiller immediately realized that it was not an ordinary way of hitting the door because there's a limit to how much one can tilt their head back. Just tilting and hitting the door wouldn't make such noise.

Bang!

After another sound, Shiller slowly stood up, because he deduced that with such a posture to make such a noise, the person's head might no longer be on their neck.

Bang bang!

The noise grew louder, as if something was trying to break the door, but Shiller still had no intention of leaving.

If it were an ordinary person, they would have been scared off by now, but as a researcher from the Magic Side, Shiller had spent a lot of time in his past life following supernatural phenomena.

Others hunt ghosts out of fear of their appearance, Shiller hunted ghosts out of fear they wouldn't appear because in his past life he had been all over looking for signs of the supernatural, just to prove that magic existed in the world, and thus explain his own anomalies.

So everytime he visited ghost-rumored places he was full of hope, only to return disappointed.

This caused Shiller, upon seeing a ghost, not to be afraid but rather excited because he had searched for so long without success in his past life, and encountering one so easily now was like striking it lucky on a single draw.

However, Shiller didn't think the individual in the room now was a ghost, since it had already been established that what was known as "ghost" actually was a type of abnormal brainwaves; but even with abnormal brainwaves, one wouldn't just detach their own head, indicating the influence of other supernatural factors.

Could it be Little Bruce?

Shiller didn't bend down to look through the gap under the door again. Instead, he made a quite bold move by walking over and twisting the doorknob.

Unsurprisingly, it wouldn't open.

Shiller thought that if Peter's side was normal and his was abnormal, then the hotel must be operating under some kind of rules; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to check in smoothly.

Unfortunately, it wasn't like some rule-based horror game where the rules were posted directly at the main entrance — one had to figure out the hotel's rules on their own.

But in Shiller's view, the clues were quite clear — this was a hotel, and hotels all over the world followed some common rules, like not being able to open the room door without a key card.

Shiller suspected that some of the abnormalities in the hotel, like the man in room 1901 who kept slamming his head against the door, also had to follow these hotel rules, otherwise they couldn't move around freely.

Now, without a key card outside, Shiller couldn't open the door, and the man, influenced by some supernatural phenomenon, probably couldn't open the door for some reason either.

When Shiller entered the room, he was given a key card, so if this man was able to enter the room, he must have had a key card; therefore, the only possibility was that he couldn't use it now.

No, it might be more than just not being able to use the key card. After all, Shiller hadn't swiped his card again when he left; he just had to press the door handle to open it, so it was very likely that this man couldn't press the door handle.

Why was it his head hitting the door?

After a brief thought, Shiller had the answer, "It must be because only his head could move; if his hands could move, he would have opened the door and come out by now."

This meant that the man standing in front of the door had his head possibly controlled by something, like a facehugger or similar creature that could only control the head and might not have any concept of opening doors. It could only continually slam whatever it controlled against the door in its desire to get out.

Shiller stepped back a few paces and turned to leave.

Why bother if he can't come out? Let him keep slamming until he falls apart, ideally.

But after taking a couple of steps, Shiller walked back; he thought for a second, pulled out a sticky note from his pocket, and took a pen from another pocket of his coat. He wrote on the sticky note, "Do you need help?"

He slid it through the crack of room 1901.

He saw blood drip onto the sticky note, and under the contrast of the white paper, Shiller saw clearly that the blood was not red, but black, and it looked too viscous, somewhat like muddy slurry.

The blood slowly gathered on the paper into the words, "Help me open the door."

So this thing could communicate?

After confirming this, Shiller did not stuff the sticky note back in, nor did he try to communicate further; he put his pen and paper away and walked towards the elevator.

He felt something was off as soon as he approached. The light over the elevator was out. Shiller pressed the button, but there was no response.

Was the elevator broken?

Shiller pressed the button a few more times forcefully, but still no response; he looked down and saw it was now 11 o'clock.

It was hard to determine if the elevator was broken or if it simply stopped operating at 11 o'clock. In America and Europe, most hotel elevators do not operate 24 hours a day; sometimes they undergo maintenance at midnight, or they just close at night outright, all of which Shiller had experienced a few times before.

So, tonight he definitely couldn't go down to get the guest list; everything had to wait until tomorrow morning.

But with an hour left until midnight, Shiller decided to investigate the 19th floor a bit more.

He paused by the elevator and then walked to the left of it; he wanted to see if there was another room 1905 on this camera angle.

Going over there, the first room was 1906, then across it was 1907, left double, right single, and like the right side, there were six rooms.

Shiller took a few more steps forward and noticed something was wrong; the room at the very end was not 1911, but 1913.

This meant the six rooms on the left were 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, and 13.

Both 5 and 13 are considered unlucky in Western culture — 5 because the pentagram is a symbol of the Demon, and 13 due to religious reasons, with Judah, the betrayer of Jesus, being the 13th disciple, and the Last Supper coincidentally also being on the 13th.

Both these rooms were located at the end of the 19th floor and seemingly hid some pattern.

Shiller arrived at the door of room 13.

Suddenly, the door to room 13 opened.

As if inviting Shiller inside, the door slightly opened a crack, from which nothing could be seen, and even the flashlight's beam couldn't penetrate the thick darkness.

Shiller turned and left.

Such an obvious trap, he wasn't going to fall for it. If there was someone inside the room, a normal person definitely wouldn't open the door upon hearing footsteps approaching; if there was no one inside, then what opened the door?

At least this exploration confirmed that there were not two room 1905s in the hotel he was in now; Peter definitely wasn't at the other end of the corridor, which aligned with his earlier guess that one of them was in a parallel dimension.

Shiller returned to the right corridor; this time, he decided to check out what was going on with room 1900.