WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 121: Room 107, Gate Room - Third Trial (12)
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Episode 121: Room 107, Gate Room - ‘Jekyll and Hyde Game’ (12)
- Han Ga-in
The execution targets Hyde chose in Rounds 1 and 2 had both been me.
While I was momentarily at a loss for words, my companions quickly began discussing it.
“Why is Ga-in the highest-priority target? Even if you're not sure, speak up. That way, the Doctor can naturally take part in the discussion too.”
At Eun-sol's insistence, usually quiet Seung-yeop spoke up.
“Could it be because Ga-in always thinks things through?”
“Because he thinks a lot? Maybe, but...”
Song-i offered another idea.
“Wouldn't there be a clearer reason than something that vague? Like, because he has an Inheritance.”
I joined in then.
“I'm not the only one with an Inheritance. You have one too, Song-i, and so does A-ri. There are three Inheritance holders here.”
A-ri gave her opinion.
“Maybe your Inheritance is fatal to Hyde? Like, it can kill Hyde?”
“They said we can't find Hyde with an Inheritance.”
“Maybe you can't find it, but you can kill it?”
Can't find it, but can kill it?
It sounded plausible, yet confusing.
Why had Hyde made me its highest-priority target among us?
Because I was the smartest? Honestly, that didn't seem right.
Two others besides me had Inheritances.
Was it because the Grimoire itself was a threat to Hyde? That felt plausible.
But in what way was it a threat? Could it kill Hyde? I didn't know. I couldn't get a feel for it.
Ever since the Jekyll and Hyde Game began, the Host had always shown us the time. Two minutes remained.
Round 3 ended while we were still deep in thought.
/The sun now sets. Daytime has ended, and Hyde's time has come./
My consciousness grew hazy...
* * *
- Round 4, Han Ga-in
The instant I opened my eyes, I looked around.
!
One person was gone. The others immediately reacted.
“Song-i?”
“Song-i!”
The Host descended.
/Unfortunately, Hyde's third execution has succeeded. The Doctor failed to defend the correct target.
Round 3's Hyde was ‘Han Ga-in.’ Hyde will now move to another person./
The atmosphere changed completely once the first casualty appeared. Still, it was okay for now. One person wasn't a problem. We could resurrect them.
I had been Hyde's Host in Round 3.
The execution target had also changed from me to Song-i. Why hadn't Hyde executed me while it possessed me? Was ‘Host execution,’ where Hyde executed the Host it possessed, impossible?
I asked directly.
“Host. Can't Hyde execute the Host it's possessing? Does Hyde die if it does?”
/It can execute them./
It can? That wording sounded like it was hiding something.
A-ri pointed it out at once.
“What happens if Hyde executes its Host?”
The Host didn't answer.
But the Host's silence itself gave us our answer. A-ri spoke confidently.
“Hyde definitely dies if its Host dies! Executing the Host is how we eliminate Hyde in the first place!”
“So Hyde only executes its Host when there's only one survivor left?”
“Probably.”
“Is that why it changed its execution target from me to Song-i? If it killed me while possessing me, the game would end.”
Eun-sol had a slightly different interpretation.
“There's another possibility. It tried to kill you twice in a row, but the Doctor defended you both times. Maybe it decided it couldn't kill you because the Doctor would keep protecting you?”
It changed targets after failing to execute someone twice in a row? That made sense.
This game wasn't easy for Hyde, either. Hyde's biggest penalty was that it couldn't possess the same person twice.
There were still several possible Hosts, so that weakness wasn't obvious yet. After a few more rounds, though, there would be only a handful of people left for Hyde to possess, making it easier to identify.
This game had a kind of turn limit for Hyde too.
Grandpa Mook-seong, who had been quiet, spoke up.
“You didn't notice at all that Hyde had possessed you?”
“No, not at all. So I don't think it's possible to eliminate Hyde with the Grimoire either. Well, maybe if I trained with the Grimoire for about thirty years...”
It was a pointless line of thought. While everyone was confused, Elena spoke.
“I think this conversation itself might be a bad move.”
“Because Hyde can hear us?”
“Yes. Even if we work hard together and figure out Hyde's selection criteria, if Hyde realizes that we figured it out, it might change those criteria.”
My head was starting to hurt.
We were discussing how to uncover Hyde's scheme, but Hyde could hear everything we said.
The idea that even discussing it was dangerous became more convincing.
After Elena pointed that out, the discussion died down, and everyone sank into their own thoughts.
A-ri, who had been thinking by herself, opened her mouth.
“I have a feeling the next execution target is-”
Tap.
Eun-sol grabbed A-ri's arm. A-ri immediately understood and closed her mouth.
Everyone was thinking the same thing. We could guess who the next execution target was.
But we couldn't say it openly.
If Hyde learned that we were guessing its execution target, it might execute someone else.
The more chaotic the game became, the more control Hyde would gain, and the harder it would become for the Doctor to defend someone.
...
In the silence, everyone's minds began racing.
The first execution target was me. The second was Song-i.
Both of us were Inheritance holders. It couldn't be a coincidence.
Was Hyde executing participants with greater value?
There was a problem with that guess too.
Even if Inheritance holders had greater value and therefore ranked higher for execution, why was I ranked above Song-i? Because I had Descent too?
That explained me, since I had Descent, but why was Song-i ranked above A-ri when they both had Inheritances?
And what standard divided the remaining four people without Inheritances, Lee Eun-sol, Park Seung-yeop, Kim Mook-seong, and Elena?
My thoughts became more tangled.
There seemed to be some other standard separate from having an Inheritance.
A standard that could rank all seven participants in the game.
Let's think about how to respond this round first. If this pattern continued, A-ri was the next target.
Did the Doctor know that too?
As I thought, an idea came to me.
Hyde couldn't possess the same person twice.
It would never possess me again, so it was fine if I found out who the Doctor was.
As long as I didn't say anything, Hyde had no way to learn information that only I knew.
I immediately thought of a way to find the Doctor.
I couldn't find Hyde with the Grimoire, but I could find the Doctor.
I summoned the Grimoire beneath the table and looked over my companions one by one.
I hope they catch on quickly...
I began possessing them one at a time.
First, Eun-sol.
...
She wasn't the Doctor.
As I left, I was briefly worried, but Eun-sol was quick enough to understand what had happened. Even after I left her body, she only widened her eyes slightly without much reaction.
Next was Grandpa Mook-seong.
...
He wasn't the Doctor.
I was a little worried when I left his body, but even though he didn't understand the rules of the game, Grandpa wasn't oblivious. He only cleared his throat slightly without much reaction.
Next, Elena.
...
The instant I entered her body, I knew!
A hologram remarkably similar to the Status Window floated in front of Elena's eyes.
It displayed everyone's names and selection boxes.
Elena was the Doctor.
Why had Elena defended me for two consecutive rounds?
I had both an Inheritance and Descent. Maybe she had judged that I was the most likely to clear the Gate Room.
It didn't matter.
Just before I returned to my own body, I used Elena's pen to write something lightly on her hand.
‘A-ri’
It was Elena's decision whom to defend, but I left my opinion and returned.
Elena's eyes widened slightly, but she didn't react otherwise.
The fifteen minutes were almost over.
/The sun now sets. Daytime has ended, and Hyde's time has come./
My consciousness grew hazy...
* * *
- Round 5, Han Ga-in
I opened my eyes in tense anticipation.
“Ah...!”
Groans came from my companions.
Seung-yeop, the luckiest among us, hadn't made it this time.
The Host descended.
/Unfortunately, Hyde's fourth execution has succeeded. The Doctor failed to defend the correct target.
Round 4's Hyde was ‘Kim A-ri.’ Hyde will now move to another person./
Eun-sol spoke in a drained voice.
“Has it been about an hour since this game started? Two people are already out... Even if we can resurrect one of them.”
After failing to defend the correct target twice in a row, Elena covered her face with both hands.
My mind was in chaos too.
I had thought A-ri, the next Inheritance holder after Song-i and me, would be the execution target. But she wasn't.
Instead, Hyde possessed A-ri and executed Seung-yeop.
... This was incredible.
I'd experienced all kinds of trials since entering the hotel, but this one felt like one of the most hopeless.
The enemy wasn't even in front of us. Two companions had been executed in an instant according to the rules while we couldn't do anything.
Even Eun-sol, who was usually mentally strong, only wore a hollow expression. The others looked like they had completely broken down.
Focus. At a time like this, at least one person had to keep their head straight.
Every guess I had made so far began with one assumption.
‘Hyde never acts based on luck.’
There was no particular basis for it.
Still, I believed that since the hotel wasn't a place that killed us meaninglessly, the course of this game wouldn't be decided by pure luck.
If Hyde didn't act based on luck, there had to be a standard by which it determined the execution order.
That standard had to be one that could arrange us in a specific order.
I considered it from a slightly different angle.
Until now, I had focused on Hyde's execution order. This time, I thought about the fact that its possession order had been Yoo Song-i -> Park Seung-yeop -> Han Ga-in -> Kim A-ri.
If there was a standard for the execution order, there would be one for the possession order too.
The execution targets had been Han Ga-in -> Han Ga-in -> Yoo Song-i -> Park Seung-yeop.
The possession targets had been Yoo Song-i -> Park Seung-yeop -> Han Ga-in -> Kim A-ri.
I saw something they had in common. In both orders, Park Seung-yeop came after Yoo Song-i.
The moment I realized that...
An insight struck me like lightning!
The standard for choosing execution targets and the standard for choosing possession targets were actually the same!
Hyde had arranged us in a single order according to one standard. The revealed order was as follows.
Han Ga-in -> Yoo Song-i -> Park Seung-yeop -> Kim A-ri.
Let's organize this.
1. Hyde ranked us according to a particular standard. The order was Han Ga-in -> Yoo Song-i -> Park Seung-yeop -> Kim A-ri.
2. If Hyde executed the Host it possessed, Hyde would also be eliminated.
Taking that into consideration, I analyzed how the game had progressed so far.
I was Hyde's highest-priority execution target. To execute me, it possessed Yoo Song-i, the person after me in the order, then Park Seung-yeop, the next person after her, and targeted me. The Doctor defended me twice in a row, in Rounds 1 and 2.
Hyde decided it couldn't execute me and moved its execution target to Yoo Song-i, who came after me in the order. Because it had changed execution targets, it no longer needed to exclude me from the possession order. So it possessed me according to the original order and targeted Yoo Song-i in Round 3.
Since the Doctor was still alive, Hyde still believed it couldn't execute me. Therefore, its execution target was Park Seung-yeop. It had already possessed Han Ga-in, Yoo Song-i, and Park Seung-yeop, so Kim A-ri was next in the possession order. It possessed Kim A-ri and targeted Park Seung-yeop in Round 4.
If my guess so far was correct, Kim A-ri was the next execution target. But who would Hyde possess? There wasn't enough evidence yet.
Three possible Hosts remained for Hyde: Elena, Kim Mook-seong, and Lee Eun-sol.
To find Hyde, we had to learn the exact standard by which it ranked us, then determine the order of Elena, Kim Mook-seong, and Lee Eun-sol.
What could that standard be?
What standard could rank me and Song-i first and second, but place Seung-yeop above A-ri?
Footnotes:
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