WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 269: Room ???, Curse Room - ‘????’ (7)

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[Corrupted text]

- Han Ga-in

In a place shrouded in darkness so thick I couldn't see an inch ahead, I could strangely sense countless lives breathing within the shadows.

The cries of insects tickled my ears. Bats that only began their day late at night made mournful sounds. Slimy annelids crawled through the dirt, never having known the difference between light and darkness throughout their lives.

Even the drops of sweat running down my skin made sounds.

Blinded by the darkness, my hearing and sense of smell had become sharper than ever. I couldn't deny it anymore.

I was definitely turning into something inhuman.

Was it the aftereffect of Descent? The Grimoire's power? I didn't know. This wasn't the time to worry about that anyway.

Tense as I was, I moved as carefully as possible behind a nearby tree. I suppressed even the slightest sound of my footsteps. It wasn't because I was afraid of being heard. I was afraid my own footsteps would drown out other sounds.

Everything in this world had detected me long ago.

“Something's watching us.”

Jin-cheol finally broke the silence.

I didn't intend to criticize him. I felt the same thing, and we'd already been discovered anyway.

“Should we head back down the mountain for now?”

“We came all this way, and we're leaving empty-handed? Let's look around a little more. This mountain range is supposed to be something special. Even if we run, we should at least see the monster's face first.”

As if he had drawn Courage from the depths of his heart, Jin-cheol boldly stepped forward.

--- Kreeee!

The instant I snapped my head toward the sudden noise, I saw something so unexpected that I couldn't speak.

“Th-that isn't a monster. No matter how I look at it...”

With a mechanical whir, a robot pointed what could only be a turret at us!

“R-run!”

--- Boom! Boom, boom!

I poured every last bit of strength in my body into my legs and ran.

Deafening explosions thundered behind me. Dust rose, trees burst apart, and all kinds of creatures fled in panic. Something invisible tore through the air and struck the hard wall of a cave.

In an instant, what had been a cave became a mound of shattered stone.

[Corrupted text]

The Chat Window? How in the world-

“Come this way! They won't pursue you once you get outside the Boundary!”

The Doctor's familiar voice reached us.

When our frantic escape finally ended, we found two more companions.

* * *

It struck me anew, but meeting like this had never been easy or guaranteed.

We had been scattered across a vast primitive world, each of us given nothing but a tribe of prehistoric people.

Since everyone had experience clearing Curse Rooms, we easily concluded that we needed to go beyond the mountain range, as indicated by suspicious songs or legends passed down through the tribes. But the range was enormous. There were no established hiking trails like in the twenty-first century. People scattered across a continent had simply started moving toward the distant mountains they could see. How were we supposed to find each other that way?

The normal thing would have been for everyone to explore different parts of the range.

Yet Grandfather and the Doctor had spotted us from afar.

“It was because you brought your tribes with you. How many people are there? There must be five thousand altogether. With that many people moving, clouds of dust rose high enough to be seen from a distance. We thought it might be you, so we spent an entire day coming here.”

“Huh. I never considered that moving with the tribe would leave such obvious traces and make us easier to find from outside. So it had that effect.”

“Talk about a lucky accident. Anyway, welcome to the Hell Mountain Range!”

At the huge camp the prehistoric people had set up beneath the range, we talked for quite a while.

We shared what each of us had gone through, the monsters we had fought, and what had led us to conclude that we needed to come to the mountain range.

It struck me anew how much we had grown.

We had been dropped into a primitive age and handed a crazy mission: control a tribe and beat monsters to death. Yet all four of us had managed it fairly well.

In some ways, Jin-cheol and I had it easy. We had the Grimoire or overwhelming physical strength. Even Grandfather, who had already heard the account, was impressed all over again when he heard that Sang-hyeon, who had no supernatural powers suited for combat, had dealt with monsters by setting booby traps.

Then the subject changed, and silence fell over the camp.

Jin-cheol spoke with a heavy expression.

“So... only the two of you came, leaving the tribespeople behind.”

“Yeah. What else could we do? We had to come to the mountain range, but those idiots said they'd rather die than go there.”

I had no intention of blaming Grandfather or the Doctor. I had thought the same thing myself.

What Jin-cheol had said repeatedly was true.

Only Jin-cheol and I could have forced our tribes to come all the way to the mountain range. What was possible for an evil wizard who could steal people's bodies and a prehistoric Hercules who punched monsters to death was impossible for Grandfather and the Doctor.

Jin-cheol looked like he wanted to say several things, but in the end, only one sentence came out.

“I thought you all had realized this after going through the Hotel's trials. What we do in Curse Rooms is ultimately about protecting people.”

The Doctor answered.

“I know. I intend to do that when we clear this room. But to clear it, we must first escape several times and gather information. At the information-gathering stage, it can't be helped.”

It would be better to cut this off here. A pointless confrontation wouldn't help anyone.

“Ahem. All right, let's leave it there and talk about the mountain range. As the Doctor said, this is part of the process of eventually clearing the room.”

“R-right. I said something unnecessary. What exactly are those monsters in the mountain range? No, aren't they robots rather than monsters?”

The atmosphere immediately changed when we started talking about the robots in the range. Everyone began speaking eagerly, and Grandfather answered first.

“They're robots! No doubt about it. The prehistoric people have no knowledge of such things, so they assumed the robots were just incredibly powerful monsters. The countless eyes they described were cameras attached to the robots, and the power that summoned thunder was their autocannons.”

“Now it's completely certain that this isn't an ordinary place. To cross the range, we need to get past those robots.”

Everyone fell silent at my words.

Jin-cheol spoke with a somewhat gloomy expression.

“Did you see... that robot firing its autocannon earlier? Trees exploded even when the shots only grazed them. If we got hit by one, there wouldn't be a trace of us left. It's more surprising that we escaped alive.”

“I don't think we escaped because we ran well. It seemed like the robot fired warning shots. The shells all missed us by a short distance.”

If it was truly a robot equipped with highly advanced AI, it wouldn't miss from that range. It had deliberately fired to miss us.

“Warning shots? So we survived by relying on a robot's mercy?”

The Doctor offered an opinion.

“The robots in the mountain range seem to follow certain behavioral patterns. For example, they never leave the Boundary of the range. If beings like that went outside and started rampaging, neither the prehistoric people nor the monsters could stop them.”

“They don't leave the mountain range... Right. As soon as Ga-in and I crossed a certain line, they withdrew immediately.”

It was good that they didn't leave the range, but that meant little when we needed to enter it.

Was there another pattern?

Then something came to mind.

“I don't know if this counts as a pattern, but they seemed to observe us before firing warning shots. The moment we entered the area near the range, I felt a strong gaze on us.”

Jin-cheol nodded, apparently thinking the same thing.

At that moment, the Doctor slapped a knee.

“Ah! I have a good idea. Ga-in and Jin-cheol, didn't you two work hard to bring all the tribespeople here? Do they need to sit around doing nothing? There happens to be something suitable for them to do-”

My breath caught.

A similar thought had briefly crossed my mind before I pushed it aside. Had the Doctor reached the same idea?

“Let's restrain ourselves!”

“...Pardon?”

“I had a similar thought for a moment, but no matter what, that would be going too far. We need to return outside someday. If possible, innocent sacrifices-”

“Excuse me, but what exactly did you think of, Ga-in?”

“...Weren't you going to suggest forcing the tribespeople to charge into the mountain range? We break through while the robots kill them?”

The Doctor's mouth fell open. So did Grandfather's.

“What are you, Stalin? We're not sending in penal battalions! Are we a blocking unit?”

“Ga-in, not at all. Even with your and Jin-cheol's excellent leadership, if you made the prehistoric people do that, they would revolt. There's no need to create more conflict.”

“Then what were you thinking?”

“How about a so-called Round and Round Operation?”

The Doctor's idea was simple, but it sounded plausible.

The robots did not leave the mountain range's Boundary, and once someone entered the range, the robots began observing them. Once they crossed a certain line, warning shots drove them away.

In other words, entering the range did not mean immediate death.

What if we spread the entire group of over five thousand tribespeople out in a thin, wide line near the Boundary and had them repeatedly cross in and out of it?

Wouldn't the robots scatter in every direction to watch and guard against thousands of people individually? Once the robots were dispersed, the Hotel party could gather and break through at a relatively weak point.

“What do you think?”

Grandfather nodded before answering.

“It's a decent idea, but there are two problems. First, the tribespeople are terrified of even looking at the range. It won't be easy to make them linger near the Boundary. We'll need to make them understand that they're safe as long as they stay around the Boundary. And in a world without communication devices, we'll probably need training to make thousands of people move in perfect coordination.”

“Those are problems we can solve by spending time. Of course, there may be a time limit.”

“Second, this one's more serious. Let's say we succeed in scattering the robots. Let's say there's only one in our path. Are we confident we can beat it?”

Silence fell over the camp again.

At times, I felt that the Hotel party was surprisingly vulnerable to simple, brute force.

I could do something about supernatural monsters or evil spirits with the Grimoire, but an AI robot spraying thirty-millimeter autocannon fire left us with even fewer options.

Jin-cheol finally summed up the situation.

“We need someone else.”

“...”

“At minimum, we need someone strong enough to destroy a couple of robots armed with autocannons. My blessing has weakened now, so I can't manage it...”

The Doctor answered in a subdued voice.

“A being capable of that should be approaching us right now.”

* * *

The next day, an enormous cloud of dust began approaching from several kilometers away.

At first, people were delighted, thinking a new companion was on the way.

Soon, their faces drained of color.

The ‘Legion’ was approaching through the sky.

Footnotes:

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