As more of Hou Fei’s soldiers arrived after realising that their General had not been joking about providing them with an exclusive hotel stay, they began to take their R & R leisure time seriously. Given their sheer number, not all soldier could fit inside Hotel Pandastic, so the latecomers had been settled in the currently only other open hotel, Hotel Penguinton.
Like their names suggested, the hotel’s architecture of each building was actually shaped close to the animal’s outer appearance. Hotel Pandastic had a wide curve exterior that placed the rooms outwards while there was an extensive inner garden in the centre of it all. (Qiu Yue seriously did not spare the reserves at all.)
Within the garden, there were a variety of activities to spend their time on such as sports stadiums (yes! plural!) for baseball, football and even rugby. Worried that there were not enough players to start a friendly bout? No problem, the animal tribes were here to entertain the guests as well.
For the tribes, this was considered their break time. They had learnt these new sports from Jin’s world and come to enjoy them tremendously. Somehow, the beavers had come to prefer baseball over any other game and despite their build, they had become rather accurate with their throws and hits, making them a formidable opponent to play against.
The Polar Bears as another example adored rugby to the point that they even pooled whatever money they earnt to buy proper equipment from the System. Some of them used this opportunity to further their base cultivation bestowed by the System and built up enough strength that they managed to rival many soldiers in a test of brute force.
While every tribe did have a chance to test out every type of sport that was offered there, football surprisingly turned out to be the only one that was appreciated by all the tribes equally. Each and every one of them had organised a dedicated team of eleven to play it. They even set up a tournament with a point system. This easily made football the hottest event during the soldier’s stay.
Although cultivation was also allowed in both Rugby and Baseball, there were restrictions and limits for how much one could portray their cultivations since the rules they played by were similar to the one back in Jin’s world. Yet, football was the only exception to this rule. Throughout the day, the football events alternated between ‘cultivation only’ and ‘powerless’ matchups.
For ‘cultivation only’ matches, there were no bars holding any person on the field down. Every team member was allowed and even encouraged to use their cultivation to the utmost limit with no penalty insight to score a goal.
It might sound like an absurd game of power, but that was the whole point of the game. Still, to make it more interesting and to avoid the game turning into a slugfest where the stronger average team would win, whoever scored the goal would be put into a weakened state for five minutes.
The power limitation bracelet, which every member had to equip before the match, would turn on and limit the powers of that person to an average Grade 2 cultivator. This way, each team still had to strategise who should do the scoring and regulate the offensive strikers to pit against their opposing rivals.
The ‘cultivation only’ matches were so well received, that any soldier who was watching it on the sidelines hoped to give it a try. The game was so popular that the monsters actually reserved the fields so that they could play as soon as they were on their break.
Even the Savants from the Shaolin Football Instance had joined in to pit against the soldiers for honour and glory. It had reached a point that the soldiers requested the ‘powerless’ matches to be ditched in favour of more ‘cultivation only’ games.
Other than the fields within the garden, there was a gym and a pool though those were limited. However, should the soldiers agree to pay a little more, they could be connected to the Panda Muscles for privacy sake.
And yes, the soldiers were paying for all these amenities that were on deck in Hotel Pandastic. Aside from General Hou Fei sponsoring the rooms, everything else required cash though it was charged at a discounted rate since they were ‘guests’ in the hotel.
Hotel Pandastic was more sports-oriented, whereas Hotel Penguinton offered more entertainment-based amenities such as bowling, billiard, karaoke rooms, (they were quite standard so as to not steal any business from the Meow Meow Karaoke instance), ice skating and rock climbing.
The ice skating field was more extensive than one might think mainly because it was a hotspot for the penguins to relax at. There were also ice-skating tracks which featured something similar to a large playground for the penguins to slide around. (Sorta like a skate park but on ice.) And because of the nature of advanced ice skating field, there were certain parts of it which were restricted and only allowed highly experienced skaters to prevent any possible collision with the penguins.
For the rock climbing portion, it wasn’t merely a static wall. Instead, it was more like a giant vertical treadmill with more than a thousand combinations for the position of the rocks, capable of posing a challenge for the most veteran of wall climbers. Obviously, the difficulty could be tweaked based on the guest’s preference, but there was never a dull moment for climbing.
However, the most unique part of Hotel Penguinton was actually the golf park. It was designed to be more child-friendly for future customers, but the attraction alone made it worth the adults’ time. From the average Windmills golf attractions to using the ball to break a domino effect, the soldiers who played this were astonished how a simple game of hitting a ball could be that thrilling. (Of course, some were already planning to bring their girlfriends with them to try it out.)
Qiu Yue had always found creative golf park courses to be a marvel of physics, considering the effort required to get the ball into its goal. Thus, when presented with this opportunity, she had decided to add this as a mini project and a way to explore her creativeness. (Although it was already quite obvious, she had more than enough creativity judging by the way she splurged cash to build the hotels.)
The golf courses had a note stating that they would be changed on a quarterly basis and eventually, she wanted to compile all the courses into one big service instance.
Considering all the fun stuff within the two hotels, not many soldiers had the chance to get out and explore the sea dome ‘instance’ that they were in.
Yet the few who did, soon realised that they were restricted about where they could go by Qiu Yue and the Empire Building Sub System and thus the message to stay inside had already been spread to their brothers-in-arms.
The only outside entertainment that was currently available was the beach and that itself was a bit of a downer… since the Royal Snake Battalions were filled with guys only. Still, with surfboarding, beach volleyball or just sun tanning, the soldiers of the Royal Snake had their fill of seaside fun before the ‘training’ commenced.
