WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 217: Room 104, Curse Room - ‘Hotel High, the Prestigious Academy’ Re (11)
──────
- Lee Eun-sol
‘I devoted my entire life to the Lord. Please, just give me a chance to speak with you, even for a moment.’
Aurelia’s desperate plea was painful even for me to hear. Anyone with a heart would be moved by those words. Of course, the Lord wasn’t human, and that elementary school Saintess didn’t seem to have received anything resembling proper character education.
“The best thing you can do is offer your neck here.”
An eerie light rose from the grinning girl’s hand, and she swung her arm horizontally as though slashing with an invisible sword.
The next moment, Aurelia, who had looked as though she’d lost all hope just seconds ago, rolled across the floor at incredible speed, dodged the invisible blade, and charged at the young Saintess!
The young Saintess recoiled in surprise, but it was already too late. Aurelia seized her throat with one hand in an instant. A faint trail of light lingered behind Aurelia like ripples.
I thought the power bestowed by the Lord had nearly run out. Did she still have some left? Was the difference in their mastery of power so immense that Aurelia won with that little strength alone?
“Hic! What the hell!”
“You’ve never been trained in how to use power. You only gather it in your fingers and blast it out. Your reaction speed and speed of thought are no different from an ordinary human’s.”
“...”
“What could Father possibly be thinking? Another Saintess to replace me? Of course, he can choose one. I wasn’t the first Saintess to begin with. But I truly don’t understand why he would make a child like you, who has received no training at all, into a Saintess.”
I was sorry to Aurelia, but I thought I understood. To the Lord, the Cult was only a cake he’d take a bite from and throw away. He had no interest in running it long-term!
Even if she was an untrained child with power, he must’ve thought she could defeat Grandfather and me. Elena probably wouldn’t have been able to use her power against that terrifying elementary school Saintess. Looking at it this way, where had the Lord’s calculations gone wrong?
His failure was that Aurelia had joined our side while still retaining some power.
The moment Grandfather and I stepped forward, Aurelia’s sharp eyes turned toward us.
“Stop.”
“...”
“I only need a promise from Father right now.”
Pero Ga-in replied.
“Are you planning to ask that child to arrange a conversation with the Lord?”
“Yes. You may not know this, but a Saintess of the Cult has-”
“Has the right to question God and hear an answer, or something like that? Then your god can simply ignore you.”
“Father is not some loafer off the street. He stands above all others. His word carries the weight of a thousand gold pieces. It isn’t as trivial as you claim. If you don’t agree with me, then cut down this child and me now.”
At that point, Grandfather rushed forward!
More precisely, he tried to rush forward. If Aurelia made some sort of deal with the Lord and left, Grandfather and I would have to fight that absurd Saintess alone. There was clearly no way out of that.
Then a very loud pecking sound came from above Grandfather’s head.
--- Ting!
“... You-”
“Grandfather, let’s just wait.”
I understood what Ga-in was thinking now.
“In the end, you can’t abandon your god. You’ll soon pay the price for that wrong choice.”
After that, things moved swiftly. The Saintess’s body flashed, and she swore in God’s name that she would arrange one conversation for Aurelia. The Lord also allowed Aurelia to speak with him through some unknown means.
His intention was obvious. He wanted to remove Aurelia, the only one here who could threaten the Saintess.
I didn’t want to remember what happened after that.
Unfortunately, neither Grandfather nor I were combatants in our party. Thankfully, the Lord wanted this done quickly, so the young Saintess never got the chance to toy with us.
With a massive hole pierced vertically through my stomach and agony that felt as though my entire body were burning, I watched Pero “fly” toward the Saintess, transform into the Grotesque, and split apart.
At the moment of death, I knew our hope had come true, and for a brief moment, I forgot the pain.
* * *
A young girl and a woman in her twenties walked through a long corridor together.
--- Tap. Tap.
“... Don’t get any foolish ideas.”
“Foolish ideas?”
“Ah, even if you beg Father to forgive you-”
“Seong-a, don’t worry. I have no intention of asking Father to make me Saintess again.”
“Who said anything like that? Don’t jump to conclusions!”
“Really? Then I’m sorry.”
At the end of the corridor was a rather old-fashioned door. Just as Aurelia reached for its handle, the Saintess grabbed her hand.
“What are you doing? Are you an idiot? That’s not the door!”
“Oh, right. My mind must’ve been so clouded that I forgot.”
“That’s why Father decided you had to be replaced.”
The Saintess sneered at Aurelia’s “mistake,” ignored the old-fashioned door, and opened a hidden door in the wall to the right. Beyond it was a mysterious space filled with soft light.
Strangely enough, there was a bed at the far end of the room. The young man on it quietly lifted his head, and the Saintess immediately dropped to her knees.
“Father! First, I apologize. Regrettably, I wasn’t skilled enough to-”
“Kh!”
“...”
“Ha, this is seriously ridiculous.”
“Father?”
“No matter how much I reduce the variables and reduce them again-”
As soon as he finished speaking, the young man abruptly collapsed onto the bed as though he had fainted. The Saintess’s eyes widened like a rabbit’s.
* * *
- Han Ga-in
My consciousness floated into the air. In an instant, the consciousness bound to my body gained its freedom. As my vision, freed from reality, turned upward, I saw a blazing sun there.
‘Heh, heh! How ridiculous. Aurelia, that child was so desperate that I showed her a little goodwill.’
‘Goodwill? Call it what it is. You pulled that stunt because you were worried that clueless grade-school kid didn’t know how to use her power and would get beaten by Aurelia.’
‘In a pig’s eyes, all things look like pigs. In Buddha’s eyes, all things look like Buddha.’
‘So, how does it feel to meet me again?’
‘No matter how thorough a plan may be, gaps are bound to appear. I considered the possibility that you might steal Aurelia’s body, but some of my power remained in that child, so I thought you would not dare take her body rashly. Did all that power happen to be exhausted in the clash just now? What a strange coincidence.’
I stopped talking and activated Avatar’s power with everything I had. The battle with the Lord over control of my body during Descent began again!
Black threads and threads of flame tangled together. Two forms of control, two contradictory commands, were endlessly imposed on my body. As the Grimoire’s power collided with the Lord’s power, blood began to flow from my eyes, nose, and mouth, and my skin started to split apart.
It was the same as before. It was my body, but absurdly enough, I didn’t care if it died. The Lord, on the other hand, didn’t want the body to die. In the end, the clearly stronger Lord had more to lose, so he retreated.
‘I admit that this experience is somewhat unpleasant, yet refreshing. But nothing will change. This time, there is no one who can damage my body while you hold me back, is there?’
‘You’re calling it your body quite openly now, aren’t you?’
‘How long can you keep up this ridiculous struggle? Five minutes at most? Consider it an honor. As a human magician, you dared to contend with a god for five whole minutes.’
I could sense mockery and ridicule in the Lord’s voice as he spoke of honor. Unlike before, most of the companions who could help me while I held him back were already dead. That must have made him so relaxed.
During that strange struggle, like a mixture of string figures and puppetry repeated countless times in a single instant, my consciousness returned to the moment I had made the plan.
After the Lord took my body and I escaped by borrowing Pero’s body, I thought and thought without end.
Where was the Lord’s blind spot?
At first, I had no idea how to deal with the Lord’s tactics. He used my Descent as though it were his own and toyed with Elena as though he had read her blessing completely. His plan seemed to have no openings, and he truly felt like a terrifying god.
Then realization struck like lightning.
If I began to believe the enemy was perfect, I could never defeat him. To defeat an enemy, I first had to find his weak point, and to find that weak point, I had to analyze his failures.
The Lord had failed once.
According to Plan A, the moment we drove Aurelia into danger and the Sacred Sun appeared, the contest should have ended. Once the Lord seized control of my body with that power and used Descent, we should have had no way to resist.
Yet his first plan failed. Our hotel party slipped beyond his grasp, and the Lord was left near death, unable to move normally for more than a day. He had no choice but to carry out another plan.
Why had he failed?
Because Song-i defended against the brainwashing caused by Descent with her bracelet? Because Cha Jin-cheol’s Otherworldly Star was powerful? Because the blood curse A-ri implanted through her suicidal charge was too poisonous? All three had an effect, but they were variables the Lord, while controlling my descended body, could have suppressed easily enough.
His one failure came from my Avatar’s power. Avatar’s power was the only variable that could shake Descent, which was nearly invincible physically, through nonphysical means. It ruined the Lord’s first plan.
What did that mean?
The Lord did not seem like someone who made careless mistakes. If he knew about Avatar’s power, he would have prepared some way to counter it as well. He did not know about Avatar’s power.
Perhaps he didn’t know it existed at all. Perhaps he knew its name but not what it could do. After all, I had only learned what it could do the day before entering Room 104. Once I realized this, I knew there were gaps in the Lord’s information about us.
What exactly did he know, and what did he not know?
At the very least, he knew blessings thoroughly. In particular, he knew not only the blessing called Justice, but Elena’s Justice itself. Otherwise, a child Saintess below the age of criminal responsibility could never have appeared.
His information on Inheritances, on the other hand, had clearly been uncertain.
It was a strange imbalance of information. He knew blessings precisely, yet didn’t properly understand Inheritances.
...
One hypothesis came to mind.
Back when I obtained Descent, another being had joined the negotiating table where I made a deal with the Lord to create a game where everyone won. That being was the Sponsor. If the source of the Lord’s information about us was the Sponsor, this imbalance made sense.
As the Owl proved when it was punished by the Hotel, the Sponsor’s authority had limits. Blessings were their domain, but information about rewards granted by the Hotel, such as Inheritances, might have exceeded their authority. That may have been why the Sponsors could not provide the Lord with that information.
If so, the Lord might not even know about the existence of one thing that everyone in our hotel party considered obvious.
‘Father, five minutes is enough time to end everything.’
* * *
When the young man collapsed onto the bed as though he had fainted, the room was thrown into complete chaos. The young Saintess was overwhelmed by indescribable fear at the god’s sudden absence and didn’t know what to do. Aurelia, who had remained silent as though watching all the confusion from afar, took a step forward.
“Aurelia! Stop at once! I will not forgive any tricks.”
“What tricks? That’s absurd. Something unusual seems to have happened to Father, so I only thought I should send him somewhere safe.”
“Somewhere safe? There is no safer place than this!”
“Saintess, do you know about the battle outside between the Management Bureau and that wicked demon?”
“What does that have to do with-”
“The Management Bureau has many hidden powers. Some of those powers may have injured Father just now.”
“...”
“Saintess, if you truly are the pillar of the Cult, then you must have eyes that can distinguish truth from lies.”
A pale light appeared in the eyes of the girl, who had been trembling in fear.
“Oh, you have mastered that power. That’s fortunate. From now on, if there is even a speck of falsehood in my words, I will immediately offer my neck, so please listen to me for a moment.”
“... Speak.”
“In the past, the Great One bestowed a treasure upon me for emergency escape.”
“Father gave you such a treasure?”
“I can assure you that this treasure will not harm that body in any way. It sends its user to the safest place in this world.”
“Where is that place?”
“A place like a comfortable hotel. Delicious food is served every day, and the interior is as luxurious as can be.”
“...”
“Was there any lie in my words? There wasn’t. Still, if you can’t accept it, I will wait. I’m only worried. Father has already been silent for three minutes. What if we wait like this and something irreversible happens?”
The girl trembled as she stepped aside. Aurelia picked up a small box and approached the unconscious young man. Written on the box were the words, ‘Escape Button.’
“Father, I’ll send you somewhere safe, so please wait just a little longer!”
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 98
Current Location: Level 1, Room 104 – Curse Room ‘Hotel High, the Prestigious Academy’
Sage’s Advice: X]
- Han Ga-in
Using Aurelia’s hand, I grabbed my body’s hand and pressed the Escape Button. At that moment, my consciousness, which had been outside due to Avatar’s power, immediately returned to my body. At the same time, my entire body began to float!
Unlike when I used Avatar’s power and only my consciousness rose into the air, my entire body flew upward. It passed through every structure, as though the concrete and ground above the underground city were all immaterial illusions, and soared to the very edge of the sky.
As I continued flying higher and higher, I instinctively realized there was a boundary at the edge of the sky. The moment I crossed that boundary, the sun fell away from my body.
“Ahahahaha! Is that you? You’re really nothing but-”
An enormous heat ray burst from the sun, and I shut my mouth in surprise! Fortunately, the heat ray could not cross the boundary and faded away like a match flame.
“You’re nothing, yet you act so smart! I won, you fucking bastard!”
‘You! You dare, you worm! The next time we meet, I will trap you in a brazier whose flames will not go out even after a thousand years-’
“Father, have you gotten dementia? Where’s this ‘next time’ between us? Goodbye!”
I felt my consciousness growing faint.
/You have escaped!/
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
