Repeated attempts on the door yielded no result. After almost ten minutes of fruitless work, and trying to keep the strange slapping vine from causing us bodily harm, we gave up and decided to check out the rest of the place. Maybe we’d find the bloody key somewhere and could open the door that way.

After a moment of consideration, we moved to the singular open door first, looking into the hotel's dining room. The place was sadly completely wrecked, making me wonder what might have caused that much damage to the furniture but left the walls, windows and floor untouched, though I doubted I’d get an answer easily. After encountering the fairly dangerous slapping vine near the counter, we moved slowly and methodically, our eyes constantly swivelling to ensure we didn’t miss another hole or any other kind of trap.

Given the open nature of the room we found ourselves in, with nothing to provide cover other than the piles of destroyed furniture, we remained incredibly cautious. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me that there were enemies beneath the rubble, to the point that I conjured a cloud of deadly mist, just to keep us from being surprised. And yet, surprised we were.

When nothing happened.

Despite engulfing the entire room in a cloud deadly enough to even damage Undead, nothing reacted to it, the piles of rubble didn’t even twitch. In some ways, that result should have calmed me down, knowing that there were no enemies was normally a good thing but in this case, I only felt more unnerved, unable to shake the sensation of caution.

It took a bit more effort to coalesce the mist I had conjured down into orbs but the advantage to the dense orbs was that it took only minimal effort on my part to unleash them once again, though they wouldn’t regain their full volume. It was enough to flood a medium-sized room and cover our escape, especially with the confounding effects of it. In addition, I conjured another shield from Ice, letting it float above Silva, ready to tank any attack that might otherwise strike my canine companion.

And onwards we went, past the piles of rubble towards a sliding door into what I suspected to be the kitchen. After our encounters in the Dark Slaughterhouse, I had no illusions about the dangers of kitchen tools wielded by magically enhanced enemies, even Lia was happily lugging around a meat-cleaver and the hook-chain she had found in that dungeon, meaning we were all primed and ready for a fight when Lia pushed the door open, something Silva couldn’t really do due to the lack of hands.

Looking at the kitchen only increased the tension I felt. The place was, compared to the dining room, pristine, without any damage or dirt, it was as if somebody had cleaned here just moments ago. My eyes were immediately drawn to the cupboards and closets, fearing that enemies might pour out of them at any moment. Maybe some sort of insane maid or the Roomba of doom, I wasn’t sure what might wait for us here but I wasn’t about to be surprised by it.

As my eyes roamed the room, I realised that the frozen shuttles I used to fight were hovering above my shoulder, my subconscious mind readying itself for a fight. Keeping them aloft with a sliver of my attention, I tensed even further, while Silva, Alex and Lia were moving through the room, checking everything. Luna and I remained near the door, covering their back and making sure nothing could come at them from the sides, but again, the only sound we could hear was made by us. There seemed to be nothing here, at least nothing we could see.

Suddenly, I noticed movement from the corner of my eyes and instantly, Astral Power burst out of me as Overflow activated and launched the frozen shuttles with deadly force and intent. Only for them to crash into one of the closets, destroying the door and piercing the mob sitting inside. Alarmed by my attack, Lia had launched herself across the divider in the middle of the kitchen, her cleaver out and ready to strike while Silva bounded back, covering Luna and myself.

“What was that?!” Lia asked, staring at the area I had just attacked, unable to see any enemies. Now, looking at the area directly, I couldn’t see anything either, making me wonder if the movement I had seen had been there or if I had imagined it.

“I thought I saw movement,” I admitted, my mind drawing the frozen shuttles back to me, the closet now a ruined mess. Silva moved next to it, sniffing the air, before letting out an annoyed growl, one that was decidedly negative. There was nothing to smell there, nothing but the bottle of bleach I had accidentally destroyed.

While the rest of us were still preparing to fight a foe that didn’t seem to be there, Alex continued to explore the kitchen, sniffing the air and even opening a few cupboards on their way. Releasing some of the tension we felt allowed us to return our focus on searching through the room and interestingly, Alex was the one finding the most interesting items, namely bottles filled with different chemicals. Strangely, there were no labels on the bottles, nothing to mark out what they contained, only opaque canisters that didn’t quite look like plastic. For a moment, I considered taking a closer look but given that Alex was the one of us best at Alchemy, I left it to their expertise and focused on remaining vigilant.

Not long after, Alex let out a few soft chitters and placed the various bottles on the counter, obviously leaving them behind. While I wasn’t quite sure why they did it, I trusted that there was a good reason for it and didn’t question them, at least for now. Sadly, the second door out of the kitchen was just as closed as the door behind the reception counter, only that there was no smacking vine near this one. That allowed us to throw everything, including the kitchen sink Lia ripped from one counter, at the door at our leisure but to my surprise, we didn’t even leave a mark. That durability was clearly granted by the dungeon, making me wonder if there was a way to open it. A key, most likely, but we’d have to find it.

With the kitchen a dead end, we returned to the reception area, making sure to stay away from the hole containing the smacking vine and continued down the hallway. There were quite a few doors here, and as we opened one after the other, we came across guestrooms in strangely different conditions. Some of them were pristine, similar to the kitchen, while others were completely demolished, like the eating area, there was no rhyme or reason the the differences, at least none that I could make out just yet.

The only thing truly constant about it all were a few small holes near the ceiling and floor, which we avoided as much as possible and if it wasn’t we were ready to dodge any surprise attacks. Sadly, blocking the holes with conjured Ice, something I had tried with the first hole we came across, was impossible, the vines had enough power to simply crush my Ice. When I tried to push in more right after the vine disappeared back into the hole, I encountered an incredibly weird resistance, as if I was trying to push my Ice through the wall. After a few tries, I was forced to put it down as another sort of dungeon weirdness, forcing us to remain on our guard, not that we’d have dropped it. This place was creepy enough to make the hair on my neck stand straight, there was no way I’d ever relax in here.

Soon, we reached the end of the hallway and yet another door. There was something a little different about this one, mainly the sign reading emergency exit but it was also far less welcoming, more a fire security door than the flimsy doors to the guest rooms.

For a moment, I was almost certain it would turn out as another bust, another locked door, only for Silva to carefully sniff it and allow me to use my Ice Magic to push down the bar holding it closed.

With a push of the shield I used to keep Silva safe, the door swung open inwards, revealing a short hallway, lined with various shelves and linen closets. With that many ways for an enemy to remain hidden between the linen, I decided to take no risks and threw in the small orbs I had condensed the mist into earlier, letting them burst to their full volume, instantly filling the room.

Sadly, the reaction to my preemptive attack was just like earlier.

The silence of the grave continued to reign as nothing happened.