WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 291: Room 204, Mission Room - ‘Hotel Cinema’ (14)
──────
- Cha Jin-cheol
The moment lightning struck me, a storm of light that seemed capable of burning the entire world filled everything around me.
I couldn't see anything. Nothing at all. Like someone hit by a flashbang, amid the violence of light filling my entire vision, I could only tremble and tremble.
Only one fact was clear. The very fact that I was alive right now was abnormal.
My body had been strengthened by the blessing of Courage. It had durability beyond human limits, but it clearly had limits. At the very least, I shouldn't have been able to think straight while being burned alive by lightning like this.
Something incomprehensible had happened to my body.
The light gradually faded, and my senses began to return.
An acrid smell pierced my nose, and my entire body shook up and down. Kurta's half-burned body was still clinging to its tenacious life.
My body had turned pitch-black. Something like hard obsidian scales had replaced the skin all over my body. My eyes and ears had changed too.
As I climbed toward Kurta's head in confusion, a familiar voice spoke.
‘... Who are you? I scorched you until half my body caught fire, yet you're unharmed while I've ended up like this.’
“Kurta?”
‘Who else do you think it is?’
“You don't know this, but there's someone else talking in my head.”
‘...’
“I'll put an end to that stubborn life of yours.”
‘Master of the Sky....’
In its final moments, the god's hound died calling for its master.
The instant Kurta's skull burst, a bright blue light rose from the dog's body toward the sky. Maybe someone in the heavens had collected the hound's soul.
Of course, that was none of my business.
“Waaaaah!”
Cheers shook heaven and earth!
The soldiers who had been trampled by Kurta, the embodiment of horrifying violence, and driven into despair filled the battlefield with cries of joy.
What was this feeling supposed to be called? Happiness? Fulfillment? Ecstasy?
No single word could possibly describe it! My heart pounded like mad, and a concentrated emotion I'd never felt before tickled my throat.
“Uaaaaah!”
I let out a wild roar without realizing it, and the soldiers roared along with me. I would probably never forget this moment for a long time.
Still, one concern rose in my heart.
* * *
When I returned to the tent of the commander-in-chief, the National Protector Grand General, that concern became reality.
The soldiers on the battlefield had been dozens, even hundreds of meters away from me. They had only seen Kurta die and assumed I'd performed a miracle, so they cheered.
That meant most of them hadn't seen what had happened to my body.
The situation changed once I entered the general's tent, where they could observe me much more closely.
The generals who had been cheering when I entered saw my grotesquely transformed body and froze, their mouths hanging half-open.
How was I supposed to explain this?
I'd thought about it the entire way back, but I couldn't come up with a clear answer. So I decided to blame someone who was already dead.
“General Cha! Your body, what on earth...”
“Kurta.”
“What?”
“Kurta cursed me. It said it would punish me for daring to bare my teeth at the Sky God's faithful hound.”
“Th-that can't be!”
Even as I said it, I wondered if they would believe such bullshit. They did.
The generals who had been watching me fearfully soon came over to comfort me, saying there would surely be a way to cure it once we returned to the imperial capital.
From their perspective, Kurta was an absurd monster, an elephant-sized wolf that wielded lightning. It wasn't hard to believe it possessed the power to curse humans.
Once the mood relaxed a little, the National Protector Grand General smiled at me.
“General Cha, come have a drink. Your body may have changed, but you can still drink, can't you?”
... A drink.
At that thought, my face grew a little warm. Well, it felt like it did. I had no idea whether my face, covered in something like black armor, had actually turned red.
‘I will return before that drink gets cold.’
Why the hell had I said something like that?
I must've gotten too drunk on the atmosphere.
... Still, I didn't regret it.
You only live once. How many chances would I get to say a line like that?
“Haha! Unfortunately, the drink must've gone cold by now. If I'd returned a little sooner...”
“What are you talking about? You returned before it got cold.”
The National Protector Grand General had placed the cup on top of a heater. For that moment, I was so impressed by his thoughtfulness that I clapped without realizing it.
Not long after, a feast began, with meat and drink everywhere.
Perhaps the excuse that Kurta had cursed me had already spread through the camp. The soldiers flinched when they saw me, but they didn't avoid me or treat me like a monster.
...
“Hey.”
...
“Answer me. You can talk to me, can't you? We're probably about to move on to the ‘next scene,’ so what the hell did you do?”
Until the scene changed, the being I suspected was a ‘witch’ didn't say a single word to me.
What was she thinking?
It was something I had to settle once I got outside.
* * *
When Cha Jin-cheol's body grotesquely mutated, every audience member in the theater fell into confusion.
“W-what? What the hell is that? Did Jin-cheol take the Star? No, that can't be it.”
Unlike Eun-sol, who was flustered, Mook-seong spoke calmly.
“Isn't that just part of the movie's plot? Maybe a god descended upon the protagonist?”
A-ri tilted her head.
“Out of nowhere? That's too random. More importantly, no matter how I look at it, that kind of transformation doesn't seem holy.”
Seung-yeop looked at Cha Jin-cheol's appearance, covered in pitch-black scales, and was impressed for a different reason.
“That looks exactly like Black Panther from the movies! Is it a similar kind of effect?”
A little later, when Cha Jin-cheol referred to it as ‘Kurta's curse,’ his companions became confused again. That was because, from their perspective outside the film, they hadn't seen Kurta cast a curse even once.
At that point, Ga-in, who had been paying more attention to the movie's plot than Cha Jin-cheol's transformation, snapped in irritation.
“Seriously! I thought we were finally getting near the ending, but this again! Did these hotel bastards drug the plot or something?”
* * *
--- Clatter!
The sound of a steel cart catching on a rock.
--- Clang!
The sound of the cramped cart struggling forward, my body repeatedly striking the metal around me.
...
What the hell had happened to me?
The movie's plot had progressed like a storm just moments ago, but it was simple to summarize. Around the time the feast ended, I blinked once, and a considerable amount of time had passed. Then an imperial official in a scarlet robe appeared before me and began shouting.
“Criminal Cha Jin-cheol, receive the imperial decree! Alas, how tragic! Your deception of the people and collusion with the grassland bandits have been revealed to all under heaven. Your evil has finally failed to conceal the corruption that has manifested in your flesh...”
The rambling boiled down to this.
I had colluded with the nomads of the grasslands and brought the empire to a crisis.
With that declaration, the imperial official led the soldiers who had locked me in a mobile cage and began heading for the capital.
Normally, not even the emperor could make up something this ridiculous.
The problem was...
I turned my head slightly and caught my reflection in the metal ceiling.
A strange being that nobody would consider human came into view. I looked like a villain from the special-effects shows I watched often as a child.
“Looks pretty cool, actually.”
I meant it.
It looked pretty cool to me.
But how would the people of this world see it?
The answer came easily once I thought about it.
In my current state, the emperor could spout whatever bullshit he wanted and pin any crime on me. My body itself would be evidence.
The generals who had fought beside me had such great faith in me, no, feelings close to worship, that they believed my excuse about Kurta's curse.
Would the emperor and the officials in the capital, who had never shared that experience, believe me?
I was already a ‘war hero,’ so there must've been countless people who wanted to keep me in check for far smaller reasons. Now that they had such a convenient pretext, there was no way they would let me go.
I had no idea what I was supposed to do in this situation.
“Take a short rest!”
...
As the procession stopped, the rattling steel cart stopped too.
Then a loud commotion began outside!
“Waaaaah!”
What the hell was going on?
Since I was trapped in a mobile cage, I couldn't see what was happening outside. All I could hear were countless soldiers clashing spears and swords as they fought!
What was this?
Wasn't the person escorting me an imperial official? They were openly attacking an imperial official on the main road to the capital?
I didn't know much about history, but even I knew this was outright rebellion!
Should I just break out of the cage?
Honestly, I was confident I could easily break this thing with one arm. That was the reason I'd been able to think through everything so calmly until now.
I could leave whenever I wanted.
Before I opened the cage door, though, someone else came in.
“H-huh?!”
“Why are you so surprised?”
It was the familiar old man, the National Protector Grand General.
“No, aren't I a traitor right now? Can you really just open the door and come in?”
“Are you surprised because I opened a mere door? Can't you see this?”
The old man smirked and rolled a round object toward me.
It was the head of the official the emperor had sent, the one who had been spouting nonsense earlier.
“Tell me honestly. You could've broken the iron bars and gotten out whenever you wanted, couldn't you?”
“...”
“I've seen you fight several times. Do you think I wouldn't know? Only the fools who came down from the capital believe you're truly imprisoned. So I watched to see when you would come out, but you took so long that I came myself.”
“...”
“Why were you sitting there like an idiot? Are you planning to stay like this?”
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
“You have to do something. Well, if your heart is so full of loyalty that you plan to die quietly, I won't stop you.”
“...”
“Let me tell you something you don't know.”
“Something I don't know is...?”
“There have been three attempts to poison you in your tent over the past few months, correct?”
“Weren't there two?”
“Three. Your attendants discovered one while you were away. Anyway, who do you think was behind them?”
“I've been wondering that myself...”
“You fool! Why are you so clueless? Did you think it was the grassland bandits? They were so desperate that eighty members of the imperial family jumped into boiling oil just to summon a wolf. Do you think they could so easily tamper with the food of an imperial general?”
It felt as if my mind had suddenly cleared.
An empire in crisis from war. A war hero rising in troubled times.
Hadn't countless movies worn that old story down to the bone?
What was the key element always added to that old story?
‘The emperor's wariness.’
There was no way that wouldn't be part of it!
“This bastard is just like King Seonjo!”
“King Seonjo?”
“... Never mind. Grand General, thank you for telling me. But why are you helping me like this?”
The old man murmured with a distant look in his eyes.
“I've devoted everything I have to protecting the wall for half my life. In summer, I stopped bandits who came to steal grain. In winter, I stopped them from raiding to abduct people. Yet the one sitting on the throne is busy mixing something interesting into their food whenever a capable general emerges.”
For a moment, I was speechless after hearing that the emperor had poisoned every promising general.
This guy was at least three times worse than King Seonjo.
Only then did my mind truly clear.
Just as Song-i had, at some point during the first film, sensed the ending she would reach, I too realized the ending I needed to reach.
...
Just because the one sitting on the throne was King Seonjo didn't mean I had to become Admiral Yi Sun-sin.
Sorry, but from now on, it was time for the Wihwado Retreat.
Footnotes:
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