WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 332: Re Room 203, Curse Room - ‘A New Beginning’ (12)
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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 683,626
Current Location: Level 2, Room 203, Curse Room ‘A New Beginning’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
“...That’s what happened.”
The doctor and Grandpa Mook-seong, whom we were seeing again after a long time, were painfully thin.
Had either of them eaten a proper meal since entering this room?
“You’ve all been through quite an adventure. Elder and I have suffered quite a bit ourselves.”
It certainly looked that way.
“Who doesn’t suffer in a Curse Room?”
“That’s true. By the way, it seems Mi-ro has died. Who has the Protective Suit?”
“Seung-yeop is wearing it now.”
Just then, a young woman entered the cave where we were talking, bringing water and some simple food. The doctor gave her a light greeting.
“Thank you, Blue Wind.”
“Y-Yes!”
Once Blue Wind left, Eun-sol looked baffled.
“Is she from Sang-hyeon’s tribe?”
“That’s right.”
He brought a tribesperson all the way to the mountain range?
Jin-cheol and I had done that during our first run, but after that, traveling with tribespeople had been too difficult, so we traveled on our own.
Besides, hadn’t the doctor and Grandpa Mook-seong been traveling alone since their first run?
The doctor gave an awkward smile and explained.
During the first run, Jin-cheol had confronted Grandpa Mook-seong and the doctor for abandoning every member of the tribe, saying they were taking the wrong approach. That argument had made the doctor realize something as well.
“Leaving ethics aside, they wouldn’t have given us a tribe for no reason.”
So the doctor had openly told the tribespeople that he intended to head for the mountain range after receiving a revelation from the great ancestor. Anyone who wished to follow could do so.
“Embarrassingly enough, not many followed me. I suppose it was because I didn’t have overwhelming strength like Jin-cheol.”
About seven had followed at first, but they dropped away one by one during the journey. In the end, only that woman remained.
Eun-sol made a peculiar expression.
“A young woman followed you all that way... You know what that means, right?”
“I think you misunderstand, Eun-sol. We haven’t formed any sort of deep relationship. As I said before, I only brought her along because I wanted to know the purpose behind the primitive people’s existence.”
“If that’s the case...”
After a brief silence, the doctor asked, “Ga-in, you intend to take the Core and negotiate with the AI now, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Since yesterday, I’ve been hearing robots being repositioned everywhere. The AI is already aware that the Core is approaching.”
“I figured. It’s blasting tremendous heat in every direction.”
“According to the plan, you’ll bring the Core to repair the spaceship, then depart into space again?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something troubling me. What do you intend to do about piloting the spaceship?”
“We probably won’t need to pilot it in the first place, will we?”
“That’s likely true. The crew enters Cryogenic Sleep while the spaceship is in motion. It was probably designed from the start to be controlled by the AI, and humans may not even be able to pilot it.”
“Probably.”
“Isn’t that exactly what’s worrying? We’d be entrusting ourselves to an AI hostile to us...”
“I read the records left where the Core was stored. There was a solution.”
“A solution?”
“Apparently, the AI is fundamentally designed to obey the crew and protect humanity. That was why it couldn’t intervene even eighteen hundred years ago, when humanity’s forces in the mountain range split apart and began fighting among themselves.”
“So it can’t harm us in the first place?”
“Humanity must have created a safeguard when it designed the AI after reaching such an advanced level of civilization.”
“That makes sense, but didn’t it kill us without hesitation during the first run?”
“Could it be that it doesn’t recognize us as crew members right now?”
“A good point. While Elder and I were staying near the mountain range and discussing various possibilities, that was precisely what struck us as strange.”
“What part?”
“Why doesn’t the AI know that we’re crew members?”
“...”
“We aren’t beings created from the kits Adravita stole. We’re the very crew members who descended onto this planet aboard the spaceship.”
“That’s right.”
“Then why can’t it recognize us?”
Why was that? I’d never considered it before, and now it was giving me a headache too.
“Could the AI have amnesia... No, that sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
“It’s more possible than one might think. It wouldn’t suffer memory loss like a human, but didn’t human civilization clash long ago?”
“That’s right.”
“Some of the AI’s database may have been destroyed in the process.”
“That could be it.”
“If so, the AI will continue failing to recognize us as crew members and keep trying to kill us.”
The AI had been designed so it couldn’t harm crew members. Yet if it couldn’t recognize us for some reason, that design meant nothing.
Of course, there was a solution to that as well.
“Can’t we wake the Captain?”
The doctor considered it, then nodded.
“Wake A-ri, who serves as the Captain, during the negotiations? The AI seems to recognize A-ri as the Captain even now, so it may work.”
“This would also lift A-ri’s Sealing.”
“That sounds like a convincing course of action.”
Right before we began climbing the mountain range, the doctor said something unexpected.
“I’ll stay here.”
Grandpa Mook-seong sounded startled.
“Sang-hyeon?”
“You know the saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket?”
Eun-sol nodded.
“Do that. Negotiating with the AI could definitely be dangerous, so we should prepare for the worst.”
* * *
Looking down at the remains of the civilization that had first taken root on this planet eighteen hundred years ago, Grandpa Mook-seong muttered with a complicated expression.
“What would the people who built this city think if they saw it like this now?”
“They’d probably have a moment of clarity.”
“A moment of what? Seung-yeop, what are you talking about now?”
“...”
Then Eun-sol warned us.
“It’s coming. I can see it. Everyone, get ready!”
Jin-cheol was standing atop the Core in the Protective Suit.
If necessary, we intended to threaten the AI with the Core’s safety!
* * *
‘Pride,’ inhabiting A-ri’s body, appeared alone without a single robot accompanying it.
“Pride, are you willing to negotiate with us?”
“...Negotiate? Why should I?”
“Don’t you need the Core we brought?”
“I can kill you and take it myself.”
“If that were your plan, you would’ve sniped us already. Aren’t you afraid the Core will be destroyed while fighting us?”
Pride looked unable to understand and asked, “I don’t know what you want.”
The instant we heard that, Grandpa Mook-seong, who had been clenching his fists, quickly shouted, “Let’s depart again!”
“...What?”
“Let’s leave this damned planet and head back into space!”
“...”
This time, I spoke.
“Pride. You know, don’t you? This planet has no hope left. A mad god scattered Quasi-Humans across the entire planet and turned it into something like an animal farm!”
“...”
“Let’s go back into space. Somewhere out there, there must be another planet suitable for humanity to start again. So-”
“I cannot understand.”
“What?”
“Where did you obtain such information?”
“What are you-”
“There is a spaceship in the mountain range. The Core is its power source, and the spaceship requires the Core to return to space. How do you know this?”
Come to think of it, this situation must have been incomprehensible from the AI’s perspective.
Civilization had collapsed eighteen hundred years ago, yet somehow distant descendants of traitors had suddenly uncovered the ancient, true history and brought the spaceship’s central power source.
Once I realized that, a better argument for negotiating with the AI came to mind.
Wasn’t the fact that we possessed this information itself proof that we were crew members?
“It’s simple. We were crew members of the Pride of Humanity.”
Rather than refuting me, Pride stared at me as if trying to see through me.
“It is certainly difficult to learn such information without being a crew member. Yet I still cannot understand.”
Eun-sol, standing behind me, spoke with a frustrated expression.
“What can’t you understand?”
“Enhanced Humans live longer than ordinary humans, but even they do not exceed three hundred years.”
My words caught in my throat.
As the AI said, if Enhanced Humans lived less than three hundred years, there was no way crew members from eighteen hundred years ago could still be alive.
Only then did another question arise. After civilization collapsed, where had our bodies been all this time?
This time, Grandpa Mook-seong rushed forward and shouted, “If you want, test our blood or whatever else you need. We’re the crew members you know-”
“It is meaningless.”
“What?”
“Part of the crew roster database is inaccessible to me.”
So that was why it couldn’t realize we were crew members!
“Do you have anything else to say? If not-”
Just as I felt the vibrations of robots approaching from afar, a rough voice rang out from atop the Core.
“Stop! Do you want to see me smash this?”
Cha Jin-cheol was enduring the heat radiating from the Core while standing on top of it in the Protective Suit.
When he looked ready to strike the Core at any moment, Pride reacted as though it were absurd.
“Such simian intelligence. Do you think you can destroy the Core with a human fist-”
--- BOOM!
Pride’s expression stiffened for a moment at the thunderous sound, like a cannon firing.
“...No matter how strong you are, the Core is far too durable to be destroyed with a fist-”
--- CRASH! CRACKLE!
“Do you even know what the Core is? You claim to be crew members, yet you’re trying to destroy the Core!”
“Then call off the robots. And wake the Captain!”
“...”
“The Captain! Wake A-ri! A-ri will be able to tell whether we’re crew members or not!”
“...”
The next moment, A-ri’s body began to change before my eyes.
Her inorganic expression, which had revealed no emotion, loosened as if tension had drained from it. A cold yet mischievous look appeared in its place.
When A-ri frowned and lightly pressed a hand to her forehead, I finally knew that the A-ri I knew had awakened.
“Good work, everyone! But my head hurts like crazy.”
* * *
Once A-ri woke up, the situation was resolved quickly.
The AI began communicating with us through a nearby robot rather than A-ri’s body, and the moment A-ri awakened, she declared that we were crew members with her authority as Captain.
From then on, the AI began treating us as crew members and asked A-ri whether she wished to issue a Relaunch Command.
“A Relaunch Command?”
“Captain, the Pride of Humanity has been neglected for a very long time. Even with the Core, it requires repairs before it can return to space.”
A-ri looked somewhat confused, then nodded lightly.
“Okay.”
What followed was truly miraculous.
With a deafening roar as though the entire mountain range were twisting apart, the upper section of the spaceship began to emerge. The Security Units that had occupied the mountain range moved about like workers and rapidly began restoring the spaceship.
At this rate, wouldn’t the repairs be complete within a day or two?
By evening, the spaceship’s shape had become clearly visible, and A-ri had succeeded in recalling nearly all the information.
In a place prepared by the AI, A-ri combined her own memories with the information we had given her and began organizing the situation.
“This is a pretty complicated story. I’ll trim away the details and summarize the broad strokes.”
In truth, there wasn’t much to it when you looked only at the main outline.
Over eighteen hundred years ago, highly advanced humanity arrived on this planet with Adravita.
Soon, conflict broke out among them, and Adravita scattered Pseudo-Humans across the planet to worship it.
Humanity then split between those who followed Adravita and those who did not. Both sides fell after fighting each other.
During that process, the spaceship was separated into its main body, left in the mountain range, and its power source hundreds of kilometers away.
With humanity collapsed, Adravita became the effective ruler of the world.
“And then we showed up.”
“That’s right.”
“If the curse of this room is... the fact that humanity’s new beginning fell apart?”
“Maybe?”
“Your plan is to escape the Demon God’s grasp and leave for space again?”
“That’s right.”
“Adravita needs you to leave before it can do whatever it wants with this planet?”
“That’s the idea.”
“It feels like this scenario has holes all over it...”
Our companions looked over uneasily at A-ri’s words.
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t there too much that’s strange? If the scenario is as you say, why are the primitive people even here? If all we need to do is repair the spaceship and leave for space, the primitive people have no role at all.”
“...”
“Why do we have to leave for space in the first place?”
“Huh?”
“Do you think there are lots of planets somewhere in space that are suitable for humanity? Finding this planet in the first place must have been incredibly difficult.”
“Well...”
“Why not live on this planet and lay the foundation of civilization alongside the primitive people? Wouldn’t that give them a role too?”
“Adravita will interfere.”
“Couldn’t overcoming that interference be this room’s trial?”
The area fell silent. As our companions all tilted their heads, A-ri carefully pointed something out.
“Since when did you start thinking you had to leave for space?”
“I came to that conclusion after seeing the records of the past at the base where the Core was stored.”
“Who wrote that information?”
Most of it was written by the AI-
--- RUMBLE!
Suddenly, a tremendous noise began to rise from all around us!
Jin-cheol opened the door in surprise and pounded on the walls, but they wouldn’t budge.
Then a strange sound came from the ceiling. A gap opened, and an odd gas began to pour in.
It was obviously a moment of danger, but another question troubled me. Why wasn’t Danger Alert activating?
...Because it wasn’t trying to kill us?
At that moment, a realization like lightning struck my mind.
“A-ri!”
“Huh?”
“The Relaunch Command! You gave it to the AI, right?”
“I-I did-”
“The details! What are the details?”
“F-Fix the spaceship, decide on a route, and the Human Growth Kit-”
“Not that! Information related to us!”
“Uh, um, the crew enters Cryogenic Sleep while the spaceship is in operation, so-”
The moment those words left her mouth, A-ri and I both froze.
To follow the Relaunch Command A-ri had given, Pride was trying to put all of us to sleep.
...As that thought reached me, a truly horrifying idea flashed through my mind, one that pierced through the countless questions we had carried until now.
The Curse Room had been strangely free of danger.
The scenario had seemed riddled with holes.
The Prisoner had spoon-fed us information with eerie kindness.
Perhaps.
The reason there had been no danger was because someone had removed it in advance.
The reason the scenario seemed full of holes was because someone had actually distorted it.
The reason we had been given information so kindly might have been to guide us toward a specific conclusion.
A confusing scenario with a complicated course of events.
Strip it all away and look only at the situation before us. What kind of situation were we facing?
To leave for space aboard the spaceship, we had to enter Cryogenic Sleep. The path we chose was one that put us into Cryogenic Sleep.
...Forcing my drooping eyelids to stay open, I prayed.
Please, let there be a Next Chance for us.
Footnotes:
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