WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 275: Meeting (2)
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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 131
Current Location: Level 1, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
How should we proceed when we enter Room 203 again?
As soon as the topic came up, Grandpa spoke.
“Shouldn't we first talk about how we'll gather? Ga-in, your Status Window is working normally again, right?”
“It is. Once we go back in, the Scenario should appear, and we'll be able to check our locations too. Still, that doesn't mean we'll have an easy way to gather.”
I could say that much for certain. We'd already learned it while trying to gather once before.
“We'll be scattered across land at least the size of Australia. Knowing our locations won't give us an easy way to meet up. It's not like we have a means of Teleportation... Though calling it fortunate would be a stretch, it doesn't seem like all eight of us were scattered separately. It looks like pairs of tribes were placed close together.”
Jin-cheol and I, Grandpa and the Doctor, Eun-sol and Song-i, Seung-yeop and Elena. The two tribes associated with each of those pairs were located near each other.
“Damn... Even if you check our locations, it'll be completely useless in a situation like this.”
“It'll probably say something like, ‘Near an oak forest 72 kilometers northwest.’ Knowing that doesn't help us.”
Jin-cheol cut in.
“Let's give up on the impossible right away. We'll have to gather gradually over a long period, like last time. Are we going to the mountain range again?”
The moment he said that, everyone's eyes naturally turned to A-ri. If we went back to the mountain range, A-ri would still be the biggest risk.
If we recovered our blessings, could we defeat A-ri?
One person sounded confident.
“Wouldn't we have a good chance if we went back? I couldn't use the Star properly without my blessing! Was I the only one? Ga-in, you didn't even try using the power of the Avatar. Wasn't that because you didn't feel confident you could use powerful abilities without the Status Window's protection?”
“It did have some effect.”
“Seung-yeop couldn't do anything either because he didn't have his blessing. And Miss Elena, didn't you have a hard time without Clear Mirror, Still Water?”
“Hmm... I did have a hard time, but I don't think I would've been stronger even if I'd had Clear Mirror, Still Water. If anything, it felt like I was wielding Ominous Imagination far more powerfully than usual.”
“Even so, don't you think we could win if we could use Justice against A-ri?”
“That's true.”
... I felt completely differently.
As I organized my thoughts before giving my opinion, A-ri spoke first.
“First, I have no memory at all of the fight in the mountain range. Still, I'll speak based on what I've heard from you. I think Jin-cheol is overlooking one thing. You already beat me when I was the only opponent.”
That was right.
If A-ri had been the only enemy we had to face, we'd already won on the first attempt. After Jin-cheol used the Star to collapse the building where A-ri was hiding, I stopped her, and Grandpa attacked. That strategy had worked.
“So why did a fight we'd practically won get turned around at the end? Because the robots intervened, right?”
When A-ri mentioned the robots, Grandpa looked doubtful.
“Honestly, at first, I thought she couldn't command robots inside the city. The robots chasing us outside the mountain range all disappeared when we got near the basin. But that wasn't it. The robot that killed me at the last moment suddenly jumped out of a wall, and from what I heard, Seung-yeop got killed by a robot too.”
In other words, Adversary A-ri could command robots even inside the city. Then why hadn't she sent them out from the start? Several possibilities came to mind.
“Maybe she wanted to avoid damaging the city. They weren't firing machine guns, they were firing autocannons. Every single round was practically a shell. If even one robot went wild, the ruins would become rubble in an instant.”
The Doctor offered a different view.
“Perhaps the robots are simply very valuable. When civilization was intact, robots could be mass-produced in factories and might have been more common than people. But after civilization collapsed, robots made hundreds or thousands of years ago, with no way to make more, would be incredibly valuable.”
A-ri gave an unusual opinion.
“Listening to how you described the fight... honestly, it sounds like I fought way too inefficiently. Maybe the goal wasn't to kill you, but to capture you alive for some reason. If the goal had really been to kill you, why would I reveal myself and brawl with so many of you?”
There were probably several reasons. The conclusion was the same, though. The Adversary could command robots even inside the city, and that fact alone made her extremely difficult to deal with. Bringing our blessings with us wouldn't make it easy.
Justice and the Grimoire would be useless against robots. Jin-cheol, with his blessing restored, would be able to use the Otherworldly Star much more freely, but the gap in engagement range was still too great.
“There's one more thing I don't want you to forget. If our blessings return, there's a good chance I'll be able to use The Unremarkable Girl too.”
The Unremarkable Girl had made A-ri hard to notice even when she was fooling around right in front of us. Could we really handle A-ri if she regained that ability and seriously fought us while firing lasers?
After considering all that, I gradually reached a conclusion.
Maybe the mountain range was a place we had to go only at the very end, when it was time to resolve the room. During our first attempt at Room 203, perhaps we failed because we ignored the steps we had to take beforehand and immediately headed for the area with the final boss.
For the first time in a while, I used the ability best suited to confirming that judgment.
[Advice: 3 -> 2]
‘Is there anything wrong with the decision to cross the mountain range?’
[Focus on choices that brought results, rather than insisting on choices that failed.]
“Wait a moment!”
I paused the meeting and told everyone the advice I'd received. Don't insist on a choice that failed. Focus on a choice that brought results. The meaning was fairly clear.
Let's look at the outcome. What had happened when we chose to go to the mountain range? We failed. In the end, not one person who went there survived. We did gather a lot of information, but that only mattered because there had been another choice that led to a successful escape.
The choice that led to escape was the one Eun-sol and Song-i had made. Going in the opposite direction from the mountain range and following the traces of the divine creature in the sky!
As that thought reached its conclusion, the others slowly began nodding. Still, that option had its own difficulty.
“There's a problem. Isn't Miss Eun-sol the only person who can see that blue creature in the sky?”
Eun-sol answered the Doctor's point.
“You don't necessarily have to see the creature in the sky. I wasn't moving around while looking only at the sky every time. We can just follow the shadow on the ground. I just don't know whether you'll be able to find the shadow easily from your tribes' locations.”
Grandpa immediately responded.
“Isn't that an easy problem too? You said every time the shadow passes, the wasteland becomes unnaturally fertile.”
“That's right. Song-i and I followed it for ten days, and we saw fruit-bearing thickets suddenly sprout up out of barren ground several times.”
“When the whole world is desolate, if only one area has delicious fruit growing on trees and fresh water flowing through it, that has to be the trail left by that thing. If we follow those traces, we'll naturally find the shadow too.”
It seemed we'd decided how to proceed next time. This time, we'd ignore the mountain range and follow the mysterious being floating in the sky.
“Since we're talking about the next attempt, who had the Protective Suit in the end?”
A-ri gave a simple answer.
“No one did. Seung-yeop approached something thinking it might be the Protective Suit, but what he found wasn't a Protective Suit.”
During the first attempt at Room 203, we'd entered without the Protective Suit.
“It's not strange. The Protective Suit is shared equipment that none of us owns, right? How had we handled it until now? I usually managed it, but whenever we entered a Curse Room, one of us wore it.”
“That's right.”
“This time was different. I only came out after receiving the notification, so I didn't bring the Protective Suit with me. It must've stayed in my room. In other words, we started without it. And...”
“And?”
“I think the same principle applied to the Sandglass. Did anyone see the Sandglass inside Room 203?”
“...”
The moment that damned word came up, everyone started looking irritated.
“Argh! Isn't it ridiculous even thinking about it again?”
Even Elena, who was usually calm, couldn't smooth out her furrowed brow.
“This time was really too much. We were suddenly called out and forcibly awakened at dawn. I wondered what was going on, but it turned out we'd been called there to fall into a trap.”
That was right. I'd wondered whether there might have been some other reason to call us out at dawn, but no matter how much I thought about it, the reason was obvious.
The evening before the incident, I'd been studying the Grimoire and developed problems with my eyesight. In the hotel, my vision would have recovered after sleeping for one night. We were deliberately called out at dawn, taking advantage of that gap so we couldn't respond.
“Since we're talking about it, let's go take a look at that damned Sandglass.”
“Fine.”
Amid a chorus of irritated complaints, we took the elevator. The moment we arrived on Level 2, everyone fell silent. Seeing the Sandglass made us tense up without realizing it.
...
...
It felt like we were observing radioactive waste. Nobody dared approach the table. We just stood there like idiots, staring at the Sandglass.
“Damn it! What are we doing? I'll go take a look!”
I hurriedly grabbed A-ri's shoulder as she confidently stepped forward. This wasn't the kind of situation where we could move right away just because we were annoyed. That thing was more dangerous than a time bomb!
“Hey, calm down. I'll use Advice right away.”
[Advice: 2 -> 1]
‘Give me some warnings about the Sandglass. And quit messing with me, give me a proper answer!’
[Show respect. Do not recklessly flip it before learning how to use it. It has a safety mechanism.]
‘A safety mechanism?’
It looked like I would have to examine it myself.
“Hey! Ga-in-”
“Hyung, don't talk to me! I'm concentrating.”
“O-okay.”
Slowly, carefully, I lifted it and examined its structure, careful not to trigger a ‘flipped’ judgment. It looked like two opaque flasks joined together. A small gear was visible on its side.
Was that the safety mechanism?
When I carefully turned the gear, there was a click, and the jelly-like contents inside the flasks suddenly hardened.
“What did you just do? I heard a strange sound.”
Instead of answering, I slowly flipped the Sandglass over. The others' faces turned pale in an instant when they saw it.
“Han Ga-in, you crazy bastard, what the hell are you-”
“...”
“...”
“Nothing happened?”
“Hyung, why'd you suddenly call me a crazy bastard?”
“I-I was startled, that's all.”
Turning the gear hardened the contents like stone. Once they changed that way, nothing seemed to happen even if the Sandglass was flipped, because its contents could no longer flow.
Thinking about it, a Sandglass would be impossible to use without a safety mechanism like this. How could anyone carry it around if every time it fell over by accident, it caused a massive disaster?
A-ri cautiously came closer.
“Good, good. Now we know how to use it. Normally, we turn this gear and lock it, then only unlock it when we want to use it. But when are we supposed to use it? It sends the hotel's time into the future? What does that even mean?”
“I don't know... We have one Advice left. Should we use it too?”
“Let's think more about its purpose first. Oh, and Ga-in, you carry this from now on.”
“Cough! M-me?”
“What's wrong? The first person to touch something like this should manage it. Besides, you have Advice. Maybe it'll tell you at the exact moment we need it. Something like, ‘Turn the Sandglass now!’”
“...”
I looked around. Not one person wanted to go near the Sandglass. Jin-cheol, who normally acted as bravely as Hercules, wouldn't even look in my direction...
* * *
“Alright! Today's meeting is almost over too. We've gathered information, and we've decided what to do when we enter Room 203 next time. As for the Sandglass... well, we at least learned how to use it safely, so let's call that progress. Now for the final topic, the one Sang-hyeon brought up. We talked about changing rooms. What does everyone think?”
“What do you think, Sis?”
Footnotes:
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