WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 152: Room 201, Curse Room - ‘□ □□’ (1)

──────

- Kim A-ri

“Team Leader Elizabeth, this is Hesbeth Mansion.”

“Hmm. You’re saying hundreds of people have already died in a place like this?”

“At this rate, it’ll be thousands by next year.”

“Isn’t that why we came? Let’s go in.”

--- Clunk!

“What was that sound?”

“Team Leader Elizabeth! The door’s locked!”

“What are you talking about? Contact Headquarters!”

“What? What is it? The signal’s been cut off!”

--- Beeeeeep!

After entering Hesbeth Mansion, I came to my senses as a ringing signal echoed in my head. The others opened their eyes wide and began looking around too.

Just as I thought, Ga-in had been Sealed. There were seven of us besides Ga-in.

An overwhelming amount of information poured into my brain in real time. Familiar companions stood nearby, along with two unfamiliar people. When all seven of us suddenly began stumbling around, the two NPCs looked at us in alarm.

“What’s wrong with everyone? Are you all right?”

That man’s name was... Oliver. He was an agent.

“Has the mansion’s anomaly already begun? I haven’t felt anything yet.”

That woman’s name was... Elizabeth. She was an agent too, and the leader of this team. I should get the situation under control first.

“A powerful ringing suddenly sounded in our heads. It seems to have affected those closest to the entrance.”

“Is that so? Is Agent A-ri all right?”

“I’m fine, Oliver. Elizabeth, give us a little time to rest.”

“Okay. There are plenty of chairs, so let’s rest for a moment.”

Before long, my companions began coming to their senses too. With two mysterious NPCs nearby, we eventually started using the Chat Window.

Lee Eun-sol: What are these clothes?

Kim Mook-seong: Bulletproof, stab-resistant gear.

Park Seung-yeop: Is this a real gun?

Kim A-ri: Yeah. You’re scaring me, so lower the muzzle.

Cha Jin-cheol: Are we playing special forces agents?

Kim Mook-seong: Attention! In this stage, we are all Management Bureau agents.

Kim A-ri: This mansion is experiencing an anomaly. There have been many casualties. We came here to deal with it.

My companions seemed to understand the situation now. Funny enough, we had become Management Bureau agents in this stage. The highest-ranking person among us was Team Leader Elizabeth.

The only disappointing thing was that we’d already entered the mansion. If we’d come to our senses sooner, we probably would have had one person avoid the mansion entirely and flee in the car to secure an Escape Route...

This was probably to prevent tricks like that. We only woke up after entering the mansion, after the door had already locked. Once we started looking more alert, Elizabeth and Oliver approached from across the room. Honestly, it would’ve been more comfortable if it were just us. Why were those NPCs here?

There had to be a reason. The Chat Window grew busy again.

Kim Mook-seong: A-ri, keep those two busy for a while.

Kim A-ri: ?

Kim Mook-seong: Look at Seung-yeop!

I looked to see what he meant. Seung-yeop was holding the gun muzzle up to his eye and examining it with an intrigued expression. My head suddenly hurt. Mook-seong seemed to be trying to give Seung-yeop and Song-i some basic firearms training.

Why the hell had the hotel handed assault rifles to people like them?

I had a bad feeling about this.

We had experienced Curse Rooms many times, but the hotel had never given us flashy equipment like assault rifles or bulletproof, stab-resistant gear. It wouldn’t give us such powerful equipment without a reason.

I had a feeling we would face an intense battle in this trial. I stalled for time by suggesting to Elizabeth and Oliver that we look for a way to contact the outside.

About thirty minutes passed. While searching for a way out, we also looked over the mansion’s layout. It was called a mansion, but it was about the size of a somewhat fancy rich person’s house. It was nowhere near as absurdly huge as the House of Horror, the kind of place that made you wonder if a mansion like that could possibly exist in Korea.

The interior was neat, and there were four rooms. The living room and study had an old-fashioned style too. There was a front door and a back door, but both were locked. We found nothing else. There was no way outside. The doors were completely locked. Even Jin-cheol’s monstrous strength couldn’t budge them. The radios were dead.

We even checked whether we could break a window and get out, but there were no windows in the mansion. It looked like the seven-person hotel party and two NPCs would have to search through this place.

Should I stall for more time? I glanced toward Mook-seong. As expected, he had only managed to teach them the bare basics, like where the trigger was and not to point the muzzle at people.

At this rate, Seung-yeop, Song-i, and Eun-sol wouldn’t be able to handle guns properly. Jin-cheol had served in the military, so he naturally had no problem. Surprisingly, Elena seemed to understand quickly too.

Had she used guns before? Or did she just have a knack for this sort of thing? I had no idea.

I needed to buy more time for the three people unfamiliar with guns somehow-

“Ugh!”

“Oliver? What is it?”

“L-Look at this!”

Following Oliver’s frantic gaze, I looked at the unnaturally large mirror hanging on the wall.

Bright blood-red letters appeared.

Go down.

The meaning was clear. It was telling us to move now. Based on our experiences in the hotel, if we refused to go down, punishment would probably begin soon. There was no choice. Mook-seong sighed and started moving with everyone else.

But it didn’t say to go to the front door or the back door. It said “down.” Was there a way downstairs? Elizabeth, who seemed to be thinking the same thing, found something.

“Everyone, this way!”

Elizabeth had opened what I had mistaken for the door to a third room. Behind it was a staircase leading down.

The Chat Window blinked.

Kim Mook-seong: I’ve got a bad feeling about doing what it says. Do we have to go down?

Kim A-ri: Do you have another idea? There’s no way out of the mansion.

Lee Eun-sol: Let’s go down for now.

After descending the stairs behind the door for a while, we found a passageway. What could be beneath the mansion? My companions only had a moment to look confused before we heard a clunk.

That sound? It was the sound we heard when we first entered the mansion! Jin-cheol reacted immediately.

“We heard that sound before, and the door locked right after!”

Jin-cheol quickly ran back the way we had come to return to where we started. Or rather, he tried to.

After some loud sounds of exertion, Jin-cheol came back and spoke to everyone.

“The entrance is blocked. We can’t go back anymore.”

When we first entered the mansion, the door locked and made it impossible to go outside. When we entered the underground passage within the mansion, the entrance to that passage locked, making it impossible to return to the mansion.

The same phenomenon kept repeating. We couldn’t go back. We could only move forward. Either way, we couldn’t stay in the underground passage forever.

With no other choice, we went straight ahead and emerged from the exit. The moment we came out of the passage, we were dumbfounded.

* * *

“What the hell is this...?”

“Could we have gotten confused and walked backward? Didn’t we only go straight?”

After walking through the mansion’s underground passage for a long time, we returned to the mansion’s front door.

How did that make any sense?

Yet that was the only explanation. Having somehow returned to Hesbeth Mansion, we looked around in disbelief.

But we had already searched this mansion once, so there was no need to examine it again. Familiar wallpaper, flowerpots, a television, a dining table, and porcelain decorations passed before my eyes. The suffocating interior without windows was an added bonus.

Elizabeth, who had been looking around, tilted her head and gave us an order.

“Check the living room.”

I headed toward the living room and looked around.

The soft carpet near the living room...

?

Had the carpet fibers gotten longer?

As I tilted my head in confusion, Oliver, who had searched the mansion with me earlier, noticed something strange too.

“Doesn’t the design seem a little different?”

Oliver carefully placed his foot on the carpet.

“My observation skills are quite good, and earlier, my foot didn’t sink in like this-”

--- Snap!

A dark hand shot out from the carpet and grabbed Oliver’s foot!

“Grandma told you, didn’t she? You shouldn’t walk on the carpet with your shoes on!”

In an instant, Oliver was dragged beneath the carpet. There was no way there could be enough space under a carpet for an adult man!

Oliver vanished as though he had seeped through a gap in space. The disaster happened so suddenly that nobody could react.

“Aaaaaah! Ugh!”

His screams rang out. Horrible, agonized screams.

--- Crack! Rip! Tear!

The sounds of a human body being torn apart and dismantled echoed through the mansion.

Ten minutes, perhaps even longer.

Oliver’s screams never stopped assaulting our ears.

...

Everyone was speechless before a tragedy too horrific to imagine. Only after the surroundings finally fell silent did the Chat Window blink.

Yoo Song-i: What just happened? We went down into the mansion’s basement and came back to the entrance?

Lee Eun-sol: Is it a loop? A mansion where the basement and entrance are connected?

Elena: It’s frustrating that we don’t even know this room’s name!

I agreed.

It struck me again that checking the room’s title through Ga-in’s Status Window as soon as we entered a Curse Room had been more meaningful than I thought.

We didn’t even know the room’s title.

There was obviously no Scenario Understanding.

And of course, no way to ask for advice.

We had been thrown into a bizarre murderous mansion without even the bare minimum of information.

I was about to use the Chat Window, but changed my mind. Elizabeth needed to hear what I was about to say too.

“Everyone, listen. If we keep standing here, the mirror will probably tell us to move again. If we’re going to move, we need to decide where. There are three paths in this mansion: the front door, the back door, and the basement.”

Mook-seong gave his opinion.

“Isn’t there effectively only one left? We went down to the basement and came back to the front door. The basement and the front door seem connected. That route is pointless. Only the back door remains.”

Elizabeth joined in.

“Then let’s go to the back door.”

Given the circumstances, the back door was the only path left. Should we go there?

This was confusing! If we had advice at a time like this, it would at least give us a hint. I found myself missing that guy who usually just did clumsy things.

Stay calm. What we didn’t have, we didn’t have. I needed to think based on what we did have. Wasn’t Sealing, the concept of the second floor, meant to target parties that relied too heavily on a particular person or ability?

We didn’t have enough information to know where to go. If Wisdom was the power to help us make the right choice based on the information available...

There was another ability that could simply pick the right answer without any of that.

“Seung-yeop. Where do you think we should go?”

Before I even finished speaking, Seung-yeop swayed, bumped into a chair beside him, and fell over.

The hand he flung out pointed toward the front door we had entered through.

“Ah! S-Sis, I’m sorry. Wearing this Protective Suit has made my body suddenly bigger, so I keep bumping into things-”

“No, you did well.”

That was it. I thought I understood now. Luck had already made its choice. If Seung-yeop listened to me and thought about it before choosing, it would be the wrong answer.

“Let’s go to the front door.”

Mook-seong looked puzzled by my words.

“Didn’t we enter through the front door? I’m telling you, this mansion connects the basement to the front door.”

Elizabeth also looked dumbfounded.

“Have you forgotten that the entrance to the underground passage was locked? If we return to the front door and retrace the underground passage, we’ll only arrive at the locked entrance.”

I was starting to understand.

“I have a reason, so let’s just go back to the front door. Isn’t the idea that the front door and basement are connected a little strange to begin with? Where did we enter the mansion through at first?”

Obviously, the front door. When we first entered, the front door naturally led outside. But after we entered the mansion, the front door suddenly became connected to the basement.

The space inside this mansion was distorted.

Mook-seong froze for a moment when he realized it. In the end, everyone agreed to return to the front door as I suggested. Elizabeth still grumbled that the back door was the right choice, but she didn’t overrule everyone’s decision.

* * *

We went through the same process again.

When we opened the front door, an underground passage appeared again. Once everyone entered it, we heard a clunk, and the way back to where we had been was blocked.

We followed the underground passage straight ahead, and the door that had been locked earlier was open this time.

...

No. If I was right, it wasn’t that the locked door had opened this time.

This was the door we had first discovered.

We opened it and entered the “third” mansion.

Countless mansions existed in this bizarre world.

Footnotes:

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