WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 289: Room 204, Mission Room - ‘Hotel Cinema’ (12)
──────
- Theater
The theater fell silent the moment Murtanie's head fell on-screen. The audience was so absorbed in the film that no one dared breathe too loudly.
Except for one annoyed boy.
“Ah! Stop covering my eyes! Seriously, what’s your problem?”
“Hey! Seung-yeop, you little punk. If you watch stuff like that, you’ll wet the bed because you can’t sleep at night.”
“Mook-seong. Just move your hand. You think Seung-yeop’s going to lose sleep over seeing a few corpses now?”
“Hah! This damn hotel is the worst place for kids to grow up. Why do they have to see so many dead bodies? How are kids supposed to grow up normal here? They can only turn into complete fucking psychos-”
“Mook-seong. I was born here.”
“...”
“Ah! So that’s why A-ri’s a complete fucking-”
“Take that!”
A-ri kicked Ga-in again. Eun-sol, who had been listening to their unfunny, childish conversation, grew slightly annoyed.
“Could you all be quiet? It’s getting to the good part. This is totally a hero movie. I had no idea Jin-cheol was this strong!”
Ga-in agreed.
“Right? Was he always this strong? He seems much stronger than when he fought that monkey on our first day at the hotel. If it was him now, wouldn’t he kill monkeys like that in ten seconds?”
Eun-sol muttered regretfully.
“His blessing must’ve grown. Why is my blessing still like this...? Greedy Hand’s cooldown is over, at least. I can’t really use it unless it’s Party Time, though.”
On the screen, an elderly man called the National Protector Grand General personally presented Cha Jin-cheol with a splendid Guandao and armor, praising his accomplishments. As A-ri watched the surrounding generals repeatedly praise Jin-cheol in the council chamber, an uneasy thought came to mind.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being strong. But the direction his thoughts are taking feels a little unsettling. Fighting like that on a battlefield and thinking it feels good, that it’s fun...’
* * *
- Cha Jin-cheol
The moment I beat Murtanie to death, the tide of war turned in our favor. The old man serving as supreme commander, along with every other general, made a huge fuss about how much credit I deserved for the victory and how the Emperor would surely grant me a great reward.
Around then, I remembered the film’s running time and started to feel uneasy.
The battlefield had been so chaotic that I had no idea exactly how much time had passed. Still, there was definitely more than an hour left before the film ended. What did that mean?
There was no way the army would just occupy the grasslands and wrap things up. Some unimaginable, shitty event was surely waiting to torment me.
That uneasy feeling started becoming reality when an envoy from the grasslands arrived at the military camp.
“Let it be known to you, descendants of the Emperor. The Sky God’s wrath has filled the grasslands-”
There was an old woman in the envoy party, so old it was a wonder she was still alive. They said she was the leader of the Grassland Shamans. When she started spouting incomprehensible nonsense, one of the generals shouted angrily.
“Guards! Why haven’t you cut off that old woman’s head at once?”
“Now, now! Even in war, one does not behead an envoy!”
“The Sky God shall send a loyal hound down to the earth.... The Sky God’s wrath shall descend upon the land alongside lightning....”
It meant that if we didn’t withdraw immediately, the Sky God’s wrath would descend upon the world. Thinking about it “reasonably,” all we had to do was ignore it. But thinking about it “cinematically,” I started getting a bad feeling.
Wasn’t this the second crisis?
Cold sweat ran down my back. Without realizing it, I tightly gripped the ornate Guandao beside me. The general next to me looked puzzled.
“General Cha?”
“I don’t like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“General Baek, are the Grassland Shamans well known? Are there rumors about them summoning demons or something?”
“Haha! General Cha, surely you’re joking? Wasn’t Murtanie the being possessed by a demon they summoned? Didn’t you slay Murtanie?”
So Murtanie had been possessed by a demon summoned by the Grassland Shamans. Then was the next crisis going to be something similar?
Soon, the envoy party from the grasslands returned.
At the strategy meeting, it was decided that the soldiers would rest and recover for two weeks before advancing. Since we had overcome a major obstacle called Murtanie, they said they would give the soldiers meat and alcohol.
It was a reasonable decision. Even during war, whenever there was time to breathe, you had to raise the soldiers’ morale. There was just one disappointing part. Despite playing the biggest role in earning that meat and alcohol, I never got to taste any of it.
Because two weeks passed the moment I blinked, like this was a movie.
Honestly, that moment was fucking awful. Was it really so hard to give me one piece of meat and one sip of alcohol? Three minutes after the meeting ended, I was back on the battlefield?
I wasn’t sure whether I should be grateful, but the injuries I received while fighting Murtanie had completely vanished. It was probably because two weeks had passed in the film, even if it didn’t feel that way to me.
I only had time to grumble at the vast grasslands that suddenly appeared before I realized I was on horseback and panicked. Luckily, it was an exceptional horse and naturally kept pace with the others, so I didn’t suffer the disgrace of a general falling off his horse.
Thousands of soldiers marched in formation across the vast grasslands.
At the end of that magnificent sight-
The Thunder God descended upon the earth.
* * *
The Thunder God’s name was Kurta. The nomads of the grasslands called it that, so it was probably right. It certainly looked like a wolf, except it was larger than an elephant and wielded lightning.
“Aaaah!”
“St-stop it!”
“Fall back behind the wall! Retreat!”
“G-General!”
Had ten minutes passed since Kurta started rampaging? In that brief time, the Empire’s army had become like a herd of wild boars that had encountered a tiger, desperately scrambling to escape.
Lightning struck in every direction whenever Kurta moved, burning soldiers black. A casual swipe of its front paw crushed two soldiers at once. With a light leap, it crossed more than ten meters in an instant and destroyed an entire tent.
The sight was so absurd that I didn’t even have the energy to get angry. That thing wasn’t an enemy an ordinary human army could defeat, no matter how many thousands gathered. More people would only mean more crispy human meat.
They can hear my lines outside the film anyway, right?
“Guide, you fucking bastard! You expect me to kill that thing?”
* * *
The theater erupted the moment the lightning-wielding wolf appeared.
“Wow! Are they insane? We’re supposed to beat that? That fucking Guide, why aren’t they coming out? Where are they hiding?”
“This is too much! Murtanie was at least human, but what the hell is that monster?”
As Mook-seong and Song-i shouted, A-ri stared blankly at the screen before asking Ga-in.
“Ga-in....”
“...”
“Do you think you could beat it if you went in? For the record, I definitely couldn’t.”
“If Possession works, it’d be a one-shot.”
“They called it a god’s hound. Isn’t it half a god? Its rank must be incredibly high.”
“Then I couldn’t beat it. I don’t really want to use Descent.”
“Aren’t you saying that too easily?”
“I’m not saying it easily.... Doesn’t that thing obviously look like something they didn’t send out for us to fight?”
A-ri sighed and nodded.
Ga-in wasn’t the only one who thought so. As they had experienced many times in the hotel, it sometimes presented enemies they couldn’t defeat even if they died and came back to life, or enemies that demanded enormous sacrifices to overcome.
Usually, the right answer in those situations was not to fight.
“We probably have to prevent the summoning itself, or interfere with it so it appears in a much weaker state.”
Think about it logically.
If the grasslands could summon a monster like that without paying any price, why would they stupidly wait until Murtanie died and they were on the verge of defeat?
They had clearly paid an enormous price.
The shamans might have committed mass suicide. The royal family might have offered their own lives as sacrifices. They might have used an extremely rare material that could never be used again. Or perhaps they had paid all those prices.
Naturally, a ritual like that would take quite a long time. Eun-sol looked at A-ri and asked.
“About that envoy party from the grasslands. After they left, the National Protector Grand General said they’d rest for two weeks, right?”
“Right.”
“Was that the mistake? It looks like they summoned that wolf during that time.”
“I think so.”
“The next person who goes in needs to speak up at the strategy meeting after the envoy party leaves. They need to insist that they attack immediately.”
“That meeting takes place right after the protagonist kills Murtanie, doesn’t it? That’s when the protagonist has a lot of influence. If they insist on attacking immediately, the meeting will probably go that way.”
Ga-in sighed as he watched his companions naturally discuss what they would do next. The moment that overwhelming monster appeared, they had all concluded that this attempt had failed.
What if the entire hotel party had gone in?
Song-i could twist the wolf’s senses, Elena could support them with Ominous Imagination, and Jin-cheol could shove Star down its throat. They might be able to win. But the only person in that film was Cha Jin-cheol, with no Inheritance and only one blessing.
Ga-in also thought this was a failure. He only sighed because the next person to enter would most likely be him.
* * *
- Cha Jin-cheol
... I naturally felt it.
The eyes of the people around me gradually turned toward me. Not only the ordinary soldiers, but even the generals trembled as they looked at me. Even the old man who held the grand title of National Protector Grand General was no exception.
If anyone in this world could defeat that incredible being, it was me.
It had to be me.
The one who stood in a place ordinary people could never reach.
The one who fought against enemies humans could never defeat.
The one who could reassure the weak people trembling in fear.
That was a hero, and the protagonist was a hero. So I smiled and spoke.
“Grand General.”
“... General Cha.”
“Would you pour me a drink?”
The Grand General looked as though he had no idea what I was talking about, but he filled my cup as requested. Then I said something I had always wanted to say, something I could only say at a time like this.
“I’ll be back before that drink gets cold.”
Footnotes:
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