WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 105: Party Time (7) - Understanding the Scenario
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* Evening, Day 2 of Party Time
- Han Ga-in
Of all times, it happened just as A-ri was about to tell me something important.
Lights flashed throughout the hotel, and ominous screams began echoing through the halls.
A-ri, who had been about to speak, looked at me in alarm.
“I don't know what it is, but let's move first!”
“Duck!”
The moment I turned around-
---Whoosh!
The instant I heard A-ri's warning, something came flying at me, and I immediately ducked.
What was this thing now?
It was an enormous man of unknown identity. He looked about two meters tall and wore boxing gloves on both hands.
Drool dripped from his mouth as he babbled nonsense.
“Kids these days have no grit. What's the big deal if an arm or leg breaks? Learn boxing from me. Learn boxing from me!”
A-ri made a sound behind me as if she was about to do something, but there was no need.
I immediately possessed the man's body.
...
Something was strange.
There wasn't a single memory in his head.
Only the line he'd just shouted about kids these days was in there.
Was this thing even human?
I roughly broke his legs before returning to my own body.
“Did you just possess that guy, make him hurt himself, then come back?”
“Yeah. What the hell is this thing?”
“I don't know. Let's meet up with the others first.”
As we headed toward Room 105, Eun-sol appeared, hurriedly throwing on some clothes.
“Are you two okay?”
“We're fine. What about everyone else?”
“Let's go to the basement. I think everyone went down there to hang out earlier.”
The three of us headed down to the basement together. The moment we arrived, our companions appeared, including Elena, Song-i, Mook-seong, and Jin-cheol.
More than ten crazed boxers like the one I'd dealt with earlier were sprawled across the floor.
“Is everyone all right?”
Honestly, I wasn't worried even as I asked.
How could a few crazy boxers who were just a little strong possibly threaten us?
“Of course we're fine. But where the hell are these things coming from? Do they sprout out of the ground? They keep appearing no matter how many we kill.”
Unlike me, the others had already grasped the situation through the display in the basement.
“A surprise event at a participant's request? Nightmare? Who could have possibly requested that?”
Grandpa Mook-seong looked just as dumbfounded.
“That's what I'm saying! I have no idea who requested it.”
Eun-sol suddenly lowered her head and spoke.
“Maybe... I did.”
She hadn't said she requested it. Only that maybe she had.
After hearing the whole story, I was speechless.
She'd asked Greedy Hand for a useful weapon, and it had turned the hotel upside down like this.
Surprisingly, Jin-cheol responded positively.
“Eun-sol, don't worry about it. They don't seem like much anyway. If we can get a useful weapon by taking down a few of these things, that's a great deal. You did well.”
“R-right?”
“It's okay, unni!”
“That's all well and good, but where's Seung-yeop right now?”
“Huh? Wait.”
“Ga-in! Check Seung-yeop's location with the location information.”
...
“Ga-in?”
While loud noises rang out around us, I was in a state of considerable shock.
Scenario Understanding had begun flashing in my Status Window.
So it wasn't something that could only be used in a Curse Room!
Even in the hotel, it could be used when a strange event like this created a ‘scenario.’
The instant I pressed it, a long window covered my vision.
/Scenario: Hotel Event - Nightmare
On a peaceful night in the hotel, where everyone laughed and had fun, a boy suffering from a love that could never be fulfilled climbed a mountain alone to build his courage and encountered a mysterious butterfly....
Please check the following content at Hiking in the hotel basement./
Someone tapped my shoulder while I was frantically reading.
“Huh?”
“What do you mean, ‘Huh?’ I thought you'd gone strange too. What came up in your Status Window?”
“Ah, Scenario Understanding has started working.”
I immediately told everyone what it said.
“If it's a boy, that means Seung-yeop, right? Build his courage? Climb a mountain alone? What the hell does any of that mean? Let's go to Hiking in the basement first!”
Amid the confusion, everyone headed for Hiking in the hotel basement.
A-ri's face turned pale when she heard my explanation.
Before I could even point it out, Song-i, who had already sensed something, asked A-ri.
“A-ri. You have some idea what this is about, don't you?”
“... Seung-yeop was being so clingy yesterday that I made a joke.”
“A joke?”
“I told him, ‘I don't like timid, scaredy-cat boys.’”
Grandpa Mook-seong let out an impressed sound.
“Ha! So he listened to you, A-ri, and went hiking at night to build his courage?”
“...”
“Let's go to the mountain. It looks like Ga-in's Scenario Understanding will tell us more once we enter the Hiking Room.”
* * *
We all headed to the Hiking Room.
Was it because the hotel's time was nighttime?
The inside of the Hiking Room was completely dark too, and we couldn't see anything.
Jin-cheol turned on the flashlight he'd brought, and I checked the scenario again.
/Scenario: Hotel Event - Nightmare
The mysterious butterfly's true identity is the Nightmare Butterfly.
After meeting the butterfly, the boy confronted nightmares hidden deep within his heart. Unable to endure them, he eventually sank into his trauma.
Soon, the boy's nightmares began spreading into the world.
At the moment of crisis, the companions who had been with the boy arrived at the mountain to rescue him.
Please check the following content halfway up the mountain./
“It says we need to climb halfway up the mountain!”
“I have no idea what kind of bullshit this is in the middle of the night.”
Despite the chaos, I was in a pretty good mood.
I was finally getting a rough idea of what Scenario Understanding could do.
Wasn't it a function that guided us toward the being threatening us in that room and showed us where we needed to go to solve the problem?
Without it, we'd have wandered endlessly through the hotel basement without knowing who our enemy was or where we needed to go!
If we'd had this ability earlier, rooms like Common Sense-Altering Media would have been complete cakewalks.
I was starting to understand the power of the ‘powerful enhancement’ the Owl had boasted about.
Not long after we began climbing the mountain, a troublesome battle began.
Monsters sprang out of the darkness from every direction and attacked us.
We formed up and fought back.
Mook-seong, Jin-cheol, A-ri, Song-i, and I, the ones with combat ability, stepped forward and attacked the monsters with our respective powers. Elena and Eun-sol were protected inside the formation.
It was strange to think about, but we really had become strong.
Every monster was a grotesque thing that looked like it had crawled out of a horror movie, yet I didn't feel any particular sense of danger.
Jin-cheol simply charged into the midst of the monsters and rampaged like a wolf among sheep, while Song-i performed wizard-like feats with just a flick of her fingers.
Since earlier, I had been possessing the body of a large snake-like monster and causing havoc.
A-ri and Grandpa Mook-seong were fighting well too.
At this rate, weren't we already close to joining the ranks of legendary heroes?
The problem was that the monsters seemed endless.
Each one was an insignificant grunt to us now, but for some reason, more kept emerging no matter how many we killed.
I felt like I'd use up Possession's time limit in a place like this, so I returned to my body.
I had around twenty minutes of Possession time remaining.
It would recover once the date changed, but there were still about two hours until Day 3 began.
The Chat Window began operating.
Kim Mook-seong: Attention! I don't think this is it. There's no end to them even if we kill them.
Kim A-ri: The scenario is titled Nightmare. It says the boy's nightmares spread into the world. These monsters seem to be beings from Seung-yeop's nightmares.
Lee Eun-sol: Then should we find Seung-yeop and wake him up?
Cha Jin-cheol: I'll use a star and run ahead to clear a path.
In the end, Jin-cheol used a star and charged ahead.
We waited for a moment, letting some distance open between us.
Song-i, looking tired, sat down on the ground beside me. Pero perched on her shoulder and began rubbing its beak against her cheek.
Cute.
“Are you sure Pero is okay with all these monsters around? I was worried it might transform and start rampaging too, but it's being quiet.”
“Pero is very smart, so it's okay!”
“It's okay because it's smart?”
“Pero can instinctively sense how strong those nearby are. Pero thinks the monsters on this mountain are no match for our group. That's why Pero isn't scared at all.”
Maybe because she was conveying Pero's thoughts, Song-i's manner of speaking sounded awkward.
The times Pero had gotten scared recently were when it had been alone and when Jin-cheol had hit it.
The latter was obviously a scary situation, so I just had to be careful about the former from now on.
I wanted to pet it too, so I walked toward Song-i.
---Screeeech!
Pero suddenly let out a shriek and dove into Song-i's clothes.
“Ah! Please stay over there!”
“...”
Why did it hate me so much?
... Come to think of it, there were far too many reasons for it to hate me.
On the first day of Party Time, after Eun-sol came up with the idea of using a ‘parachute,’ I came up with the idea of possessing Pero and flying outside the hotel to investigate.
After that, I possessed Pero around three more times to ‘practice flying.’
All I learned was that even if a human mind entered a bird's body, flying through the sky was incredibly difficult.
By the time I realized that, Pero had lost a handful of feathers.
Ever since then, Pero screamed and ran away whenever it saw me.
As I stood there awkwardly, A-ri nudged me.
“That's enough. It's a precious animal that came from a Golden Egg, and you're going to make it go bald.”
That should be enough now, right?
Two or three minutes had passed since Jin-cheol took out a star and ran up the mountain.
We started moving again.
Sure enough, Jin-cheol had drawn the monsters' attention and swept them away with the star. Twisted monster remains littered the area, and the path had become safe.
When we reached halfway up the mountain, I opened my Status Window again.
/Scenario: Hotel Event - Nightmare
The companions found the boy trapped in an inescapable nightmare. The boy was dying with each passing moment inside the nightmare! Can his companions save the boy and defeat the Nightmare Butterfly?/
‘Found him?’
It looked like Jin-cheol, who had gone ahead, had already found Seung-yeop.
It felt like the final part. It no longer told us where to go, and it had revealed the ‘objective’ as well.
Wake Seung-yeop and defeat the monster called the Nightmare Butterfly.
I turned toward the place where my companions had gathered.
Jin-cheol had wrapped Seung-yeop in clothes and laid him down somewhere soft.
“Is Seung-yeop okay? Scenario Understanding says he's dying right now.”
“Come see. He's really not in good shape.”
I groaned when I got closer.
Seung-yeop had never been particularly well-built to begin with. He'd always had a typically slender frame.
Now he looked like a starving boy from an African documentary.
His body had dried up until it seemed like nothing but bones remained.
As everyone panicked, there were two people who didn't.
“I know this monster. So the hotel calls it a Nightmare Butterfly?”
“You know it?”
“They exist on Earth too. The Management Bureau calls them Dream Eaters, but they're definitely the same species or something similar. They're usually common in the West, especially in Europe.”
... They existed on Earth too? They were even common if you went to Europe?
What kind of place was the Earth I had lived on?
It didn't matter. If they knew what it was, they probably knew how to deal with it.
Grandpa Mook-seong gave A-ri a look. A-ri seemed to hesitate briefly before approaching me.
“Drink.”
“Do I have to drink your blood again? What do I need to do-”
“There's no time. I'll explain once we're inside. Drink it now.”
I gulped it down.
... My consciousness seemed to grow distant in an instant, and my body collapsed.
Footnotes:
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