WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 338: Re Room 203, Curse Room - ‘A New Beginning’ (18)
──────
- Kim Sang-hyeon
--- Roooh!
The sound of the Flute reached me.
My clouded mind cleared, allowing me to think more calmly.
Ridiculously enough, that also helped me fight better.
“Haah!”
I twisted my head to the right to evade the sharp force my enemy released, then thrust out my left hand. A sharp bone spear shot from my palm.
My opponent spoke in an irritated voice.
“Argh! What kind of power did you get that spears come out of your body? Are you Wolverine?”
Instead of answering, I spun halfway around and slammed my elbow into her upper body. At that moment, she performed a strange breakfall, landing slowly behind me.
A-ri seemed to use some strange power to slow her descent, then suddenly released a red mist from her entire body!
There was no choice but to retreat and wait for an opening...
Then I realized there was no need.
If my body had been that of a normal human, then no matter how skilled I became at hand-to-hand combat through the power of my blessing, I could never have stood against such supernatural power.
But Adravita had granted me the strength of a demigod.
The moment I charged into the blood mist, sharp needles formed from every direction and stabbed toward my body.
My skin hardened like stone, blocking Old Blood's assault.
My opponent cried out in shock.
“What the hell is this power?!”
Through our repeated exchanges, I realized something. If we fought using only the power the Demon God had given me and A-ri’s Old Blood, I would win!
The next moment, a bluish light flashed within the mist. The instant I noticed it, I rolled to the side.
... The flash never came.
That power was what kept this fight going.
No matter how much I pressured A-ri with the powerful body the Demon God had granted me, she could turn me to ash with a single point of her finger.
That was why I had to retreat again and again, even with victory right before me.
Of course, A-ri was not in an easy position either. If she fired and missed, her defeat would be certain. Paradoxically, she could not fire carelessly.
“Kyah!”
At the sharp scream, A-ri immediately turned her head toward it.
Eun-sol was rolling away from a whip lined with sharp teeth.
Seung-yeop, wearing the Protective Suit, shouted as he clung to the monster, but he did not look like he could hold on much longer.
Bleeding from her leg, Eun-sol picked up the Flute again.
A-ri saw that and let out a relieved breath.
As if that Flute held the key to overcoming this room.
--- Roooh!
The sound of the Flute reached me.
The melody sank deep into my mind, bringing the strange sensation of rotten brain cells being restored one by one.
I recalled memories from long ago.
Memories from before my body had decayed, when the ‘family’ I had gained in Room 203 was still alive.
The face and voice of a woman I had forgotten long ago came to mind.
I vaguely remembered the children she had borne.
A conversation I had shared with someone. Or had it not been a conversation, but written exchanges?
The other person had seemed to find speaking human words through a mouth, or a ‘beak,’ very difficult.
* * *
‘Sir. Marriage and childbirth are certainly things to celebrate, but I am worried. Please do not forget that we must leave this room someday.’
‘□□, we need influence. Did I not explain what we intend to do from now on?’
‘I am worried about you.’
* * *
Gasp!
I was in the middle of battle. What a mistake! If she had tried to cut my throat, she would have had enough time to do so ten times over!
“... Why did you not attack?”
“The Flute of Rest seemed to be working.”
“Working?”
“What were you thinking about? You looked like you were lost in memories.”
I could not answer.
Memories that were surely mine, yet that I had been unable to recall, were returning and gradually throwing my mind into confusion.
“Sang-hyeon, listen to me for a moment.”
“...”
“Those people are what dealt the final blow that broke you mentally, right?”
A-ri quietly extended her hand and pointed around us.
The plain was full of horrifying monsters, as though an elementary school child had carelessly kneaded flesh like clay into shape.
“The trigger the Evil God left behind in the primitive people has activated. Seeing them, you must have thought your efforts to resist Adravita had all been meaningless...”
“...”
“I do not think so. This is not an emotional argument. I have logical grounds.”
“Logical grounds...”
“First, only the soldiers who came this far have developed a problem. It seems the Prisoner’s power becomes especially strong in this place. The people in the city are still fine.”
“...”
“Come to think of it, you already know that. You said this happened seventy years ago, right? When you returned to the city then, the people there were fine too, right?”
“They were.”
“Second, they can marry ‘humans’ and have descendants. You know that better than anyone. What does it mean, biologically, to be able to reproduce? It means that if you define the human species broadly, they are included too.”
“Miss A-ri, do you sincerely believe that, or are you only saying it to persuade me?”
“Do we need to distinguish between the two? What matters is that the possibility of a ‘resolution’ remains. Humanity’s new beginning, the City of Light, is still intact. The problem is...”
A-ri looked around for a moment and sighed.
Perhaps it was because the sound of the Flute had been clearing my mind.
I felt that I understood what troubled her.
Let us call Room 203’s resolution condition, as its title suggested, ‘humanity’s new beginning.’ The city that would serve as the foundation of that beginning had already been built.
The problem was that this world was filled with monsters threatening a young civilization that had not developed enough, and that the Hatchery, the source of those monsters, remained.
Under the original plan, we had intended to crush the Hatchery using the army we had brought this far and the remaining strength of the hotel party. Yet that very army had collapsed under the Evil God’s power, ruining the plan.
How could we destroy the Hatchery?
--- Roooh!
The sound of the Flute reached me.
Once more, I recalled memories from long ago.
Cha Jin-cheol died while fighting to save everyone aboard the spaceship.
I looked at the monsters swarming in from all around and despaired, then despaired again.
I could not overcome them.
Alone, I had no way to face those monsters.
I too would fall into Cryogenic Sleep, becoming a frozen corpse and rotting away through ages beyond measure...
The moment I gave up on everything, a miracle occurred. The miracle came in the form of a bird.
“I remember something from long ago.”
“Did something come back to you?”
“It is from the time Jin-cheol and I fought to save all of you. I did not remember it until now, but we actually achieved something back then.”
“Achieved something?”
“Earlier, I told you that the spaceship had dismantled and absorbed a considerable number of Security Units in order to depart, did I not?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why could it not depart?”
A-ri’s mouth fell halfway open.
“Ah?”
“You did not consider this part? It is nothing much. Jin-cheol and I separated the spaceship’s Core again.”
“The Core. Come to think of it, the Core could move on its own, right? Where is it?”
--- Roooh!
The sound of the Flute reached me.
The incomprehensible melody finally drew out the most painful memory of my three hundred years.
The memory of the moment... I broke.
Tears streamed down my face.
“Miss A-ri, this room is a painful place. You cannot imagine how many, how truly horrific things I have endured.”
“...”
“But I was able to hold on for around two hundred years. Do you know why?”
“...”
“Because I was not alone.”
Even after Cha Jin-cheol disappeared, I had another companion.
Someone who could endure ages beyond measure even after losing their body.
“Did you know? Even if a person enters a bird’s body, they cannot fly. The human brain does not have the software required for flight. Yet after ‘a very long time’ passes, that is not always true.”
“...”
“I remember training to fly with a bird that possessed human intelligence. It was more fun and joyful than I could have imagined. So...”
“So?”
“The day his intelligence collapsed, I collapsed with him.”
The clear sound of the Flute rang out.
The screams of the mutated humans that had filled the area stopped.
A bird was in the sky.
A book floated before it.
* * *
- ???
The sound of the Flute reached me. I felt the end of a long nightmare.
I knew that the irreversible ruin brought about by losing my Status Window and overusing the Grimoire had been nullified by the power of another miracle.
Who, then, was I?
What was the species of one who had been born human and lived twenty years, then become a bird and lived three hundred?
I looked at the book.
An enlightenment that had cast aside the mortal frame passed through my small head.
Was I human? Was I a bird? Such concerns were worthless and useless.
If I had truly accepted great wisdom, then the body was no more than clothing.
Could something as trivial as clothes that could be changed as needed define my essence?
I turned my head and saw a boy standing among monsters hardened like stone by the Power of the Avatar, staring at me blankly.
“That book! D-Don’t tell me!”
The woman holding the Flute was also staring at me with wide eyes.
I tapped the Flute with my beak. Only then did she come to her senses and begin playing again.
I took flight.
Feeling the cool wind, I soared endlessly upward.
The infinitely high sky, a secret place not yet permitted to those who walked the earth.
Those who could fly lacked intelligence, and those with intelligence could not fly.
Therefore, this was the safest place in the world.
That was why we hid a tremendous power here.
So that we could pass judgment in the final moment!
There was a sun in the sky.
Not the true sun created by the great universe at the moment of creation, but another sun made by humans.
A sun that could purify, in a single instant, the polluted land created by a false creator.
My body, flying toward the Core, slowly began to burn.
Naturally. The Core was a machine that released endless heat.
It did not matter. This was my final flight.
All I needed was enough strength to press a button once with my whole body.
--- Beep!
* * *
- Kim A-ri
The temperature of the atmosphere began to rise.
The ‘Core,’ which had been above even the aurora covering the sky, had begun to fall toward the ground!
People, monsters that had been people only moments ago, and monsters that had always been monsters...
All of them stared blankly at the sun descending from the sky.
Then an utterly exhausted man’s voice spoke.
“Fire now.”
“What?”
“That thing will not explode even if it hits the ground. Adravita set up the aurora to stop it, and also made a buffer zone.”
“Y-You dropped it before? Already?”
“Do you know how long three hundred years is? You have no idea how many methods I, how many methods ‘we,’ tried during that time.”
“...”
“We had a bomb, but no trigger.”
I raised my hand and spoke what might have been this room’s final words.
“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
A beam of light pierced the sun descending from the sky.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
