WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 324: Re Room 203, Curse Room - ‘A New Beginning’ (4)
──────
- Kim A-ri
Inside the split cocoon was a grotesque creature.
Its skin was red, without a single strand of hair. Its torso was large, its limbs short, and all it could do was cry with its mouth hanging open.
It was a human child. A fetus that had not yet fully matured. At first, I thought it was one of the primitive humans said to fill this world.
Then I remembered what I'd heard from my companions and felt something was off. The primitive tribes in Room 203 reproduced no differently from humans. They paired off among themselves, became pregnant, and gave birth.
There was no need for something like a human production factory.
... That brought the other beings to mind, the Divine Humans.
According to the information Jin-cheol had obtained during the first attempt, Divine Humans could not produce Divine Human descendants through relationships with primitive humans.
Even if they married, became pregnant, and gave birth, the child born would simply be a primitive human, not a Divine Human. If they couldn't increase their numbers through reproduction, that meant there was another means of creating them.
Were all the cocoons filling this place creating Divine Humans?
Just then, the hornets that noticed the destroyed cocoon began rubbing their wings together as they flew in.
Until now, they had strangely not been hostile toward Mi-ro or me, but destroying a cocoon had clearly crossed a line. It was no different from entering a hornet nest and harming its larvae.
As a massive hornet approached with its pointed mouth spread wide sideways, I quickly darted forward and hid behind another cocoon.
Sure enough, the monsters swiftly changed the direction of their attack, apparently intending to protect the cocoons even now.
--- Slash!
I swung a blade of cold at the hornet's wings. Its body looked fairly sturdy, but its wings were thin and transparent, so I targeted them. My judgment was right.
In an instant, its wings tore apart, and the massive monster crashed into the Hatchery. At this rate, I could easily handle three or four of them.
--- Buzzzz!
The ceiling of the Hatchery opened, and more than ten hornets began flying in.
At that moment, I sensed death.
* * *
- Mi-ro
I curled up tightly. I hid between the writhing outer wall and a cocoon, crouching with both hands over my head.
If you lifted a large stone in a dark, damp place near a schoolyard or an old house, you would sometimes find a pill bug curled into a ball, squirming beneath it. That was exactly how I looked now.
I remembered a funny story I'd heard at school when I was young.
They said low-intelligence animals didn't hide from predators when one appeared. Instead, they only buried their heads in the dirt.
The story was that if they couldn't see the predator, they mistakenly believed they were safe. Still, even an animal couldn't really be that stupid, could it? It had to be a lie.
... Or so I'd thought, but maybe it was more realistic than I expected.
Maybe it wasn't an issue of intelligence. Maybe they were simply too terrified of the predator to endure it. I was exactly like that now.
A-ri was risking her life against those monsters, while I was curled up alone in a place like this.
I was scared. So scared.
Why was I the only one dropped into such a strange place?
I wouldn't have minded being ignored by the tribespeople like Seung-yeop. They could've let me start among a primitive tribe too!
“Why... why am I the only one in a place like-”
Just as tears began spilling out again, a soft yet firm arm wrapped around my head.
“I'm here with you too.”
Only then did I realize that everything around us had gone quiet. The remains of more than ten hornets covered the floor, and A-ri...
“A-A-ri! Your arm!”
“What about my arm?”
“You don't have an arm!”
“That can happen when you're fighting.”
“What does that even-”
“We don't have time. Listen carefully. I'll forget everything I learned here, so Mi-ro has to remember it.”
Once the summoning ended, A-ri would lose all her memories.
“I'm listening!”
“This is a place that produces Divine Humans.”
“Divine Humans?”
“They said Divine Humans were beings who descended from the sky. I think they create Divine Humans here, then those hornets carry them to the tribes across the continent.”
“B-but why?”
“I don't know that either. More importantly, hurry and get inside the cocoon I tore open.”
“Get inside the cocoon?”
“Why do you think the monsters hadn't hurt us until now? I've been wondering that, and now I know. It's because we're also considered Divine Humans in this room.”
I understood.
The status given to us in Room 203 was Divine Human, and this place was a Hatchery that created Divine Humans. That was why the hornets, the Hatchery workers, had not been hostile toward us until A-ri destroyed a cocoon.
Once I realized that, I understood why A-ri was telling me to get into the cocoon.
Think back to what had been happening in the Hatchery.
After the Divine Human inside a cocoon matured enough to move, it would squirm and send a signal. Then the hornets would carry the cocoon outside.
We could use that process to escape. If I entered a cocoon and squirmed, wouldn't the hornets assume it was a completed Divine Human cocoon and send me out into the outside world?
“You mean I should hide inside the cocoon and move around so the monsters will send me outside?”
A-ri's lips curved into a faint smile.
“You really are smart, Mi-ro. That's how you do it. Another hornet will probably come and send you out. Now... you won't need me anymore.”
A-ri's head went limp and dropped onto my shoulder. Scarlet blood flowing from her mouth began soaking my body.
“A-A-ri!”
“... It's okay. We'll see each other again once you get outside, so don't worry.”
“It hurts, right? Cancel the summoning now-”
“No, leave it. I need to check something anyway.”
“Check what?”
“What will happen to my sealed main body... if I die...”
A-ri asked me not to cancel the summoning because she needed to see what effect her death would have on her sealed self in the mountain range.
As though she had lost all strength, A-ri leaned her entire body against me. I could feel her body rapidly growing cold.
... It hurt.
“Don't... waste time... Get inside... the cocoon...”
“...”
“The second... Mi-ro... I need to... raise her... well...”
“W-who's raising who?!”
I forced myself to stand, then made my way toward the cocoon A-ri had torn open, avoiding the hornet corpses scattered everywhere.
“Gulp!”
The moment I saw inside the cocoon, goosebumps covered my body. In that short time, the child's corpse had turned into a lump of red flesh.
The cocoon was where Divine Humans were made, and A-ri had torn it apart. If the immature baby inside had still been alive, that would've been stranger.
It's okay now. I don't want to curl up like a bug anymore. A-ri told me to get inside the cocoon!
“Sorry, little one! But the living have to live, right? Big sis has to survive today!”
After pulling out the baby's corpse, I climbed into the torn cocoon and curled up again. Writhing flesh with a foul smell and a slimy texture wrapped around my body.
This place was filled with horrible, disgusting things I couldn't possibly explain in words, but...
I could endure it now.
--- Buzzzz!
I heard the sound of a monster flying in from far away. Now I could get out of this damned place!
--- Boom!
“Huh?”
The whole world had just shaken.
I couldn't possibly describe this feeling properly, but I simply knew.
This tremor was completely different from the vibrations inside the Hatchery until now. It was a tremor that shook the entire world!
Suddenly, an unknown force tore open the top of the cocoon.
Startled, I raised my head. This time, the entrance in the Hatchery ceiling where the hornets flew in and out was ripped wide open, revealing a clear sky.
Then-
A god in the sky looked down at me.
I was small and weak.
How could a human compare to that great being?
The moment I saw it, I knew.
The gap between that being and me might have been greater than the gap between a chick and a human.
I became a candle before the sun.
[You are surely a candle. Yet you are also a flame that will not be extinguished even in the ocean.]
I heard a strange voice. In that mysterious place filled with terror and joy, grotesqueness and beauty, I felt a masked being extend a hand and bestow a blessing upon me.
The being in the sky no longer looked like a god. It was only a whale-like monster, somewhat stronger than a human.
“Who are you?”
「P□ide's C□re has been de□t□oye□. Wh□t have you d□ne?」
“Excuse me?”
What was that supposed to mean? There was too much strange static.
Perhaps because I hadn't understood, the whale in the sky did not speak to me again.
Instead, an unknown force lifted me up together with the cocoon and sent me hurtling through the air at incredible speed!
Fast! Too fast!
“Aaaah!”
The moment I barely came to my senses, my body was flung out of the cocoon.
Before me stood a gigantic machine whose identity I couldn't begin to guess. On its front were letters so enormous I could read them from far away.
“... Pride of Humanity?”
At that moment, a notification appeared before me.
「You have escaped!」
That was the last memory I had.
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 683,615
Current Location: Level 2, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
“...”
“...”
“...”
The corridor was filled with silence. We had escaped the Curse Room, so everyone should've exchanged the usual congratulations, but the situation was too strange to celebrate.
Honestly, we'd been forced out far too suddenly and absurdly.
“Why is everyone so quiet? Didn't you learn a lot?”
A-ri was the only one who didn't understand the situation, and she looked puzzled. The moment she spoke, someone reacted loudly.
“Waaah!”
Mi-ro suddenly burst into tears and body-slammed A-ri. More precisely, it looked like she was trying to give her an intense hug, but an overly intense hug wasn't all that different from a body slam.
“Mi-ro, did something huge happen?”
“A-A-ri! Y-your arm was cut off!”
“... My arm is right here.”
“Y-you put me in a cocoon!”
“What cocoon?”
“You said there was no child in the world as smart as me!”
“...”
A-ri wore an incredibly complicated expression.
From the sound of it, Mi-ro had gone through something extraordinary with the A-ri summoned through Time Lender, while A-ri herself remembered none of it. What a strange situation.
“L-let's go to the table first!”
* * *
For something that had ended in an instant, the conversation that followed lasted quite a while.
Only Mi-ro and I spoke. The others had been forced out before even half a day had passed since they woke up, so they had nothing to say.
“Do you roughly understand the information related to the spaceship?”
“...”
“It's only a hypothesis, but it seems something went wrong while humanity, having reached a civilization on the level of science fiction, was colonizing an exoplanet. The being that borrowed A-ri's body was the spaceship's AI.”
Eun-sol muttered as though her head hurt.
“The traces of ancient civilization in the mountain range were left while the spaceship that arrived on the planet, the setting for Room 203, was colonizing it?”
“Probably?”
“What was the machine Mi-ro saw at the end?”
Grandfather tilted his head.
“Wasn't it part of the spaceship's wreckage?”
Eun-sol found that difficult to understand.
“Isn't the spaceship in the mountain range? The AI inhabiting A-ri's body was there in the mountain range.”
I was confused too.
The AI was in the mountain range, so the spaceship also seemed certain to be there. Then what was the machine Mi-ro had seen at the end?
The Doctor cautiously offered an opinion.
“Could it be a core component of the spaceship?”
“The spaceship is in the mountain range, but only one core component is somewhere else, where Mi-ro saw it?”
“Perhaps we're supposed to take that component to the mountain range.”
“What would happen if we did?”
“Wouldn't we be able to repair the spaceship? If only the core component was removed, then the spaceship in the mountain range must be broken down right now.”
Repairing the spaceship. It sounded plausible, but I wasn't sure.
Just as I thought I should use Sage’s Advice to find out, Jin-cheol, who had been quiet until then, spoke.
“Fine. I understand all that, but I want to talk about this guy named Adravita.”
Adravita, presumably a Prisoner, had certainly acted very strangely.
“Why do you think it woke you at the beginning, Ga-in?”
“I don't think it was trying to wake me specifically. It just caused a disturbance on the spaceship, and the AI chose to wake me up.”
“Then let's say it would've awakened any one of us. And later, it showed Mi-ro that machine too. It's as though...”
A-ri finished what Jin-cheol had been about to say.
“It seems desperate to help us. Like it's begging us to resolve Room 203. Wouldn't it disappear too if the room were resolved?”
Footnotes:
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