Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 337

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 336: Re Room 203, Curse Room - ‘A New Beginning’ (16)

──────

- Park Seung-yeop

A-ri and I received a grand welcome after coming down from the mountain range.

It was embarrassing to say it myself, but unless Doctor or Pero said, “This kid’s a Divine Human,” I was hard to distinguish from a neighborhood child. A-ri was different.

Her beauty, enough to make anyone’s eyes widen, and the inexplicable mystery surrounding her quickly captivated the soldiers waiting below the mountain range.

Before long, more and more people began kneeling and praying whenever A-ri passed by.

Toward evening, the hotel party’s first meeting in three hundred years began.

* * *

A-ri explained what she thought we needed to do to resolve the room.

“What is the curse of Room 203, and how can we resolve it? A long time ago, Ga-in found the answer to that question in the room’s title.”

“A New Beginning!”

“Right. Ga-in interpreted the curse as humanity’s future falling into the mire of the primitive age, and the resolution as saving humanity from that situation.”

“But wasn’t that conclusion based on the false records left by the Prisoner?”

“Your point is valid too, Seung-yeop. But have you heard this saying? A skilled con artist doesn’t lie one hundred percent of the time. They mix ninety percent truth with ten percent lies.”

“I have.”

“The records left behind couldn’t have been entirely false. Ga-in also has the power of Scenario Understanding. If the Prisoner had left behind records that made no sense at all, they would’ve contradicted what Scenario Understanding showed him. Ga-in would’ve sensed something strange.”

“That means…”

“I think Ga-in’s interpretation itself was correct. Humanity’s ruined future is the curse, and ending that situation is the resolution. It was just wrong to think the way to do that was escaping aboard a spaceship.”

After saying that, A-ri dipped her head slightly toward Doctor.

“Fortunately, our great priest and humanity’s new founding father has already resolved eighty percent of that problem. Thank you.”

It was the first time I’d ever seen A-ri praise someone like that. Doctor must’ve felt it too, because a faint smile appeared on his face.

“Goodness. Praise like this doesn’t suit you, Miss A-ri.”

“I haven’t seen the City of Light myself, but I could tell from the armor and weapons the soldiers outside are wearing. This is definitely enough to call a civilization. The hotel can’t possibly expect us to achieve an industrial revolution too.”

“But there is still a great danger.”

The City of Light Doctor had raised faced a serious threat it couldn’t overcome through its own strength.

“You all remember the Hatchery where Miss Mi-ro began, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Three hundred years ago, we thought that place was simply where Divine Humans were created. Over the long years since, we’ve learned much more.”

The Divine Humans born from the Hatchery were carried across the entire continent by wasp-shaped monsters. It was a continent-wide transportation system impressive enough to leave anyone speechless.

Did that transportation system really need to carry only Divine Humans?

“The Hatchery is both where Divine Humans are born and the source of the monsters that fill this continent.”

While Ga-in was dealing with monsters using the power of Possession, he learned something interesting. Mysterious tentacles parasitized healthy animals and turned them into monsters.

How had those tentacles spread across the entire world?

“We confirmed it countless times over the years. On dark nights, wasps descended from the sky and scattered writhing chunks of flesh across the world. Those pieces crawled through the dirt on their own and burrowed into nearby animals.”

To resolve Room 203, we had to build a civilization in this primitive world, then destroy the Hatchery that created the monsters threatening that civilization.

The first part was already done. Only the second remained.

That was when A-ri spoke.

“Let’s wake the others too.”

“Do you mean Miss Eun-sol and Elder Mook-seong? Of course, it’s necessary, but they are very far away.”

The moment Doctor unfolded the ‘continental map,’ A-ri and I widened our eyes.

It showed where Eun-sol and Grandpa Mook-seong were in Cryogenic Sleep.

We’d have to travel at least several hundred kilometers.

“Just in case, I should point out that this room is not the twenty-first century. We can’t import food from America or China for a march of several hundred kilometers.”

Even I understood that. To take an army that far, we’d need to return to the city and spend a year or two gathering supplies.

“There’s no need to take the army. I’ll go alone.”

As she spoke, A-ri casually raised a finger. A bluish flash flickered at its tip.

“Then we should wait for that time-”

“No, don’t wait. You should leave for the Hatchery too. This isn’t a room where time is pressing, but it’s better to move efficiently. Pero can find your location anyway. And…”

A-ri looked at Doctor as if she were about to say something, then closed her mouth.

Still, no one in the room failed to understand what she’d been about to say.

During the meeting, Doctor had spat up blood-streaked phlegm three times.

Maybe he didn’t have much time left.

As the meeting was ending, A-ri asked Doctor, “Seung-yeop was wearing a Protective Suit when he came to wake me. Where did you find it?”

“Over the years, we approached the mountain range three times to wake you, Miss A-ri. We couldn’t get past that damned robot and had to turn back every time, but we didn’t come away empty-handed.”

“Really? Thank you.”

“It was nothing.”

“This is just personal curiosity, but… do you have something like a history book?”

“We do.”

“Could I have one?”

Doctor tilted his head and asked, “Are you interested in something like that?”

A-ri spoke in a sentimental voice unlike her usual one.

“When we leave this room someday, the city you built will disappear with the room.”

“…”

“Before that happens, I want to carve it into my mind. So I can remember this great achievement for a very… long time.”

Doctor’s entire body trembled for a moment, as if he’d been struck by lightning. Pale droplets rolled down from his aged eyes.

“…You’re saying many things that don’t suit you today.”

I almost cried beside them. So A-ri had this side to her too!

She’d acted like it was nothing in the mountain range, but had seeing Doctor as an old man and the traces of a newly risen civilization shaken even A-ri’s Cold Heart?

Soon after, A-ri announced that she would leave immediately without wasting time.

“Oh, Seung-yeop, come with me too.”

“Yes.”

* * *

A-ri was so mysterious as she walked beneath the dark night sky that I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Was it to make her seem even more mysterious?

Pero suddenly appeared from the sky and landed on her shoulder.

“Pero! Where did you go this time? Doctor said he wanted to see you too.”

--- Screech!

“So Pero usually wasn’t in the city?”

“No. I heard Pero always went somewhere and rarely came back. Maybe Pero was searching for a way to wake us?”

“Maybe. It can’t have been a coincidence that Pero was beside you the moment you woke up in the Cryogenic Sleep facility.”

Like Doctor, Pero had waited for us for hundreds of years. Thinking that made my chest tighten.

Then A-ri suddenly said to me, “I don’t know.”

“Huh?”

Her expression began changing rapidly.

First came the bright smile she’d worn when we first met in the House of Horror. Then came the emotionless, doll-like expression she often showed.

The literary, sentimental expression she’d revealed at the meeting flickered past, followed by the mischievous look she often had around Ga-in.

Watching her face change in countless ways, I immediately realized A-ri was lost in very complicated thoughts.

“What are you thinking about?”

“…A lot of things. For example, whether it’s okay for me to leave you behind and go alone.”

“Haha! You don’t need to worry. Doctor is here too! Don’t worry about me and go get Eun-sol and Grandpa Mook-seong-”

“I’m not bringing both of them.”

“What?”

“There isn’t enough time. You saw Sang-hyeon coughing, didn’t you?”

“…Then who are you planning to bring back?”

“Eun-sol. I realized it during the meeting. There’ll definitely be a moment when we need Eun-sol’s Flute.”

She realized it during the meeting? Was there something like that in the discussion?

“I feel like another conversation happened that only I didn’t understand.”

“That can happen.”

“Couldn’t you just explain it to me?”

“Sometimes, it’s better not to know.”

“But they say knowledge is power.”

“The more you know, the weaker you become.”

“…”

A-ri’s endlessly shifting expression settled into one.

The emotion on her face was worry.

A-ri was worried about me. Why?

--- Pat!

A soft hand brushed over my head.

“Take care. I’ll return as quickly as I can.”

“Have a safe trip.”

A-ri soon disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

After Doctor, the City of Light’s army, and I began advancing toward the Hatchery, we encountered monsters almost every day.

What we’d discussed at the meeting a few days ago felt newly real. Unless we burned away the source of these monsters, humanity’s new future could never take root in this land.

“Defensive formation!”

--- Clank!

When a house-sized bull with six legs charged forward in a cloud of dust, the Grand General, who looked to be Doctor’s descendant, loudly announced the start of the battle.

Even as they watched the monster charge, the soldiers showed no fear. They pushed an enormous wheeled shield forward.

A tremendous crash rang out, and the shield was shoved far back.

But it had only been pushed back. The shield itself remained intact, while the bull groaned in pain and collapsed backward.

The soldiers immediately began hurling sharp javelins. In less than ten minutes, the bull had become a pile of flesh.

“Wow…”

“What do you think, Seung-yeop?”

I was watching that magnificent sight from a cart atop a hill with Doctor. The pride on his face was impossible to hide.

“It’s amazing!”

“What is so amazing about it?”

I almost laughed. He was asking me to praise it more specifically, wasn’t he?

I’d heard people became childish again as they grew old. Maybe it was true.

Still, if someone had spent hundreds of years building this civilization in reality, not in some game, they couldn’t help but be moved by a scene like that.

“It’s amazing that you made a shield strong enough to stop a monster’s charge. And the soldiers are amazing too, fighting those monsters without fear.”

“You cannot imagine how long it took to reach that point…”

“Doctor…”

“I showed my sentimental side again. It is embarrassing, but leading the army I raised and advancing alongside all of you! I dreamed of this moment for three hundred years.”

After that, the City of Light’s army advanced without hesitation.

No monster, whether earthworms with skin as hard as stone that rose from the ground, car-sized boars with six molars, or huge pigeons with four wings, could stop the army.

The only things slowing the army’s advance were food and water, not monsters. Naturally, even the greatest army in the world had to stop if it had nothing to eat or drink.

What was I doing during this awe-inspiring time?

…Nothing. Really.

Doctor hadn’t expected me to fight monsters in the first place. Instead, he told me not to leave his side and always made me ride in the cart.

Only the soldiers from the city fought hard.

“Well, A-ri was so worried, but I guess she didn’t expect things to turn out like this.”

“Miss A-ri was worried?”

“Yes. She said she was worried about leaving me behind.”

“I see… She probably did not trust the army’s strength. I understand.”

Three days later, a scout reported that they had finally entered the Corrupted God’s Domain. The army stopped marching and began to rest.

“Now, let us wait for Miss A-ri and Miss Eun-sol. It will not take long. Once they join us, we can burn that terrible land to the ground together.”

I could feel intense longing in Doctor’s eyes as he used harsher words than usual.

“Doctor.”