Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 33

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 32: Room 103, The Cursed Room - ‘ㅁㅁㅁㅁㅁㅁ ㅁㅁㅁㅁ’ (1)

──────

[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Day: 13

Current Location: Level 1, Room 103 (Curse Room - Animal Farm)

Sage’s Advice: 3]

Lee Eun-sol, in snake form, curled herself up as tightly as possible.

Everyone had been assigned a role in the plan, but hers was the most important of all.

In truth, deciding where I should wait had been harder than expected.

If intelligent animals put their minds to it and pooled their strength, destroying the farm indiscriminately wasn't all that difficult.

But predicting the farm family's actions amid that chaos was trickier than expected!

Still... I didn't need to predict everything they would do to set up an ambush.

All I had to do was hide somewhere they would inevitably have to go.

Creeeak...

The carriage door opened.

“Peter! May! Help your father up. Peter! You can drive the carriage, can't you?”

“Y-Yeah, I'll figure something out. Dad taught me whenever he had the chance.”

“Good! Hurry... We need to get across the river to the doctor.”

They hurriedly bandaged the bloodied farmer and climbed into the carriage. Peter took the driver's seat, while Brian, Amy, and May sat in the back.

Just as expected.

It was hard for me to predict what would happen in such utter chaos.

But one thing was certain. For whatever reason, they had no choice but to leave the farm in that carriage.

Whether they were going to the doctor, seeking help outside, or simply fleeing the farm.

No matter their destination, their route would always lead them to the carriage somehow!

My time had come.

I didn't think my chances of surviving after this were high... but that was fine.

There were enough survivors already.

The people left behind would live on and bring me back too.

Then the snake's head shot out from the gap between the carriage seats where she had been coiled.

Before the farm family could react, her venomous fangs sank into Brian and Amy in an instant!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I looked down at the farm from the hill.

The farm that had inflicted all kinds of suffering on us over the past four days had now become a cauldron of chaos.

Livestock rampaging in every direction, a family leaving the farm amid groans of pain and despair, and even a pack of wolves watching for an opening.

In a way, it felt like we had returned suffering ten times worse than what we'd endured.

But... it wasn't over yet.

Once you start a war, shouldn't you see it through to the end?

It wasn't over until the enemy fell.

The family that had rushed out from the farm helped the farmer into the carriage.

Even that had gone exactly as Eun-sol predicted.

It struck me again how well she understood people's behavior.

I waited.

“Aaaaaah! Mom! Daaad!”

“Argh! You fucking snake! Please die! Just die already!”

Screams came from the carriage.

Before long, the snake's corpse, its head severed from its body, was flung outside.

Ah... Eun-sol had died here.

It was sad, but it was okay.

We didn't have much time left before we'd meet again anyway.

Later, we could laugh it off over dinner.

Now, one final charge fueled by my rage would end this damned farm!

I charged down the hill toward the carriage.

My hind leg throbbed with fresh, intense pain. But it was fine. I only had to endure it for one more moment. I wasn't too weak to bear that much.

Naturally, with someone already injured and the parents now bitten by a snake, nobody was in any state to drive the carriage. It didn't move an inch.

The horses noticed my charge too late and shrieked, warning their owners of the danger, but...

Too late, you dumb fucks.

Black Bull's headbutt slammed into the side of the carriage!

The carriage toppled over in a single blow.

The family lay sprawled on the ground, groaning as though they had been in a major traffic accident. Come to think of it, it really was a traffic accident.

Yesterday, when I was angry, I had wanted to trample people lying there like this.

But seeing the children clutching their parents and crying made my heart soften.

Besides, both farmers had been bitten by the snake, their shoulders already turning blue.

They wouldn't last long.

The children... even if I didn't do anything, wouldn't the wolves take care of them? Their gun was broken, their carriage was destroyed, and their parents were dead. Even if I left them alone, they had no way to survive.

Come to think of it, the wolves wouldn't attack only the children.

From now on, we needed to worry about surviving the wolves too.

But when would this count as escaping? Did the children have to die before we could escape?

Then wouldn't it be faster if I just trampled them myself?

Wouldn't that hurt less for them too?

Even if I'd become an animal, was it still too much to trample little children?

When had I started thinking about doing something so cruel to people?

As those thoughts continued to swirl through my mind, KakaoTalk activated like crazy.

Goose (Yoo Song-i): Listen to me! This plan is strange.

Giant Rat (Kim Mook-seong): What's strange?

Goose (Yoo Song-i): Ran into Goblin again just now! This plan doesn’t account for Goblin at all!

The Goblin hadn't been taken into account.

She wasn't wrong, but I wasn't sure.

Hadn't we escaped before without uncovering every secret in the room?

For example, in Room 101's Strange Family, Seung-yeop had escaped despite us learning practically nothing.

What was the Strange Family? Why had they been swept up in that madness? We had no idea, yet simply surviving had been recognized as an escape.

The same went for Room 102's House of Horror.

Compared to Strange Family, we had at least learned about dangers like the Demon of the Depths and the Elder, but that was it.

Theories about how to resolve it were everywhere.

In other words, the conclusion so far had been that we didn't need to learn every secret of a Curse Room to escape.

Of course, we would need to uncover the Goblin someday... but did we need to know now?

As I slowly compared this room to the previous ones...

A shocking realization came to me.

Something was seriously wrong. We were completely fucked.

There was another issue, seen from a different angle than the one Song-i had found.

Where did the “strange phenomenon” occur in Strange Family? In the twisted family.

Where did the “strange phenomenon” occur in House of Horror? In the mansion and its inhabitants. Song-i had merely been possessed by one of the mansion's occupants.

In other words, in the first two rooms, the strange phenomena always happened to the other side. We escaped by surviving those phenomena or stopping them from progressing.

Where did the “strange phenomenon” occur in Animal Farm?

Us.

The farm family we had been certain were our enemies weren't strange at all.

They had only acted as ordinary farm managers would!

The strange beings weren't the farm family. They were us, the ones who had suddenly begun thinking like humans!

My mind filled with confusion.

If we ourselves were the strange beings...

Had our entire approach been wrong from the beginning?

We should've started by asking why we had suddenly become animals...

That was the strangest phenomenon of all, yet we never questioned it.

As inexplicable despair washed over me, I looked at the screaming children.

Their parents had finally died, and the children cried endlessly, not knowing what to do.

Then...

Their crying stopped.

As if it were a lie, the children's expressions, which had been twisted in despair until moments ago, became peaceful.

The noise across the entire farm ceased.

The racket from the livestock, the children's screams, even the howling wolves that had been waiting for their chance.

Something overwhelming appeared, drowning out the noise of every insignificant being.

The world turned white.

Every “stage” was overturned.

The carriage disappeared. The horses disappeared. The wolves disappeared. The farm disappeared. The farm couple disappeared, as did the crying children.

And in that white hell, where everything had vanished...

There I was.

A bug tumbling helplessly like an ant before the gazes of distant beings.

Ah... I understood.

The true nature of this hell.

The moment I realized, I desperately wanted to die.

Escape and clearing the room didn't even cross my mind.

I was too terrified, in too much pain. I only wanted to fall asleep again in oblivion...

[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Day: 13

Current Location: Level 1, Room 103 (Curse Room - Animal Farm)

Sage’s Advice: 3]