WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 347: Hungry Ghost Hell (1)
──────
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 150
Current Location: Level 1, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: X]
- Han Ga-in
The moment the rough voice rang out, I focused with everything I had.
“The dangers of a Mirror Match, the Cult’s mythology and doctrine, empty the enemy’s magazine.”
What was that supposed to mean?
The first two keywords brought nothing to mind.
Fortunately, the third phrase, empty the enemy’s magazine, clicked as soon as I heard it.
Considering the nature of a magazine, it meant we had to exhaust an enemy weapon with a limited number of uses beforehand.
The enemy’s magazine in that metaphor was clearly Descent!
Just then, the hotel, where I could barely see the person beside me, suddenly began to brighten.
As the remaining companions noticed the change and looked around, a familiar voice spoke.
“Uh... Is everyone okay? It looks like a few people are missing...”
“Sis!”
* * *
The Revelation of Heavenly Secrets event ended with the third question, and Eun-sol came to as well.
The first thing she did after coming to her senses and hearing what had happened was write down the answers we’d received on the whiteboard.
“Check whether I wrote everything correctly! Not a single word can be wrong.”
Room 205: An Absolute Master. An unavoidable death. No lucky breaks will work. Outstanding martial prowess required.
Room 206: A three-way confrontation, a favorite device in fiction, check the date regularly.
Room 104: The dangers of a Mirror Match, the Cult’s mythology and doctrine, empty the enemy’s magazine.
I was fairly confident in my memory, and it matched what I remembered. It was also the same as the notes A-ri had written down after the first two questions.
“It’s correct.”
“That’s a relief.”
Normally, we would’ve discussed the answers in detail, but there was something more urgent now.
“The missing people are in Hungry Ghost Hell?”
“Yes.”
“Grandfather, have you tried using the Chat Window?”
“I opened private chats again and again, but there was no response. They must be outside the Chat Window’s range.”
After that, those of us left behind discussed how we could rescue the companions who had fallen into Hungry Ghost Hell, but we made no progress.
“What kind of place is Hungry Ghost Hell in the first place?”
Something came to mind, so I answered.
“It’s only a guess, but I don’t think it was called hell for no reason. We happen to know another place with hell in its name.”
“Frozen Hell.”
“Frozen Hell is another name for the Resurrection Room, and it also describes the room’s function. It’s a place where eliminated participants are trapped and suffer.”
Grandfather countered.
“Do you think Hungry Ghost Hell is a similar place? A place where eliminated participants are imprisoned?”
“Isn’t it?”
Eun-sol joined in.
“Even if that’s what Hungry Ghost Hell is, how can we get there?”
Grandfather’s expression darkened as he answered.
“I think there’s no way at all to reach Hungry Ghost Hell from where we are.”
“W-why not?”
Grandfather calmly answered Seung-yeop, who sounded close to screaming.
“Everyone knows about A-ri’s blessing, Secret, now, right? It’s a power that discovers Hotel Secrets.”
“That’s right.”
“We found every hidden room on Floors 1 and 2. According to A-ri’s blessing, the hidden rooms on Floor 1 are the souvenir shop and the Sanctuary of Blessings. The hidden rooms on Floor 2 are the Resurrection Room and the Mirror Room.”
“But you said there was one hidden NPC left.”
“It’s called Hungry Ghost Hell. No matter how you look at it, that sounds like the name of a space, not an NPC.”
I understood what Grandfather meant.
Hungry Ghost Hell appeared to be some kind of space. If it were somewhere we could discover, Secret should have made us aware of its existence.
Eun-sol muttered worriedly.
“You’re right. If A-ri’s blessing couldn’t even recognize its existence, that means it’s a place we can’t find.”
A gloomy mood settled over us. If we couldn’t help the companions who had fallen into Hungry Ghost Hell, there was only one answer.
They would have to escape on their own.
Grandfather spoke with a trace of hope.
“There must be a way out. When Jin-cheol first asked to be told the entire scenario of Room 205, that fortune teller bastard said an unbearable Heavenly Punishment would descend, so he should lower the severity of his question. Jin-cheol lowered it afterward.”
In other words, the current Heavenly Punishment was one the people who had fallen there could endure.
So we decided to trust our companions and wait.
* * *
- Kim A-ri
Cigarette butts and crumbling leaves blew in the wind, raising clouds of black dust along the streets.
There didn’t seem to be any functioning subways or cars, yet deafening noise filled the air from every direction.
All the trees along the road were withering, and the lawns bore only the traces of having dried up.
The city was bleak and desolate...
Yet two intense emotions boiled within it.
Hatred and hunger.
“You! You bitch!”
“...”
“What were you thinking when you looked at me just now?”
“...”
“You think I don’t know? I know everything! I know what bitches like you are thinking!”
“Do you?”
“I heard it... I heard it! ‘So-and-so, study hard, or you’ll end up like that man, picking up trash on the streets.’ You fucking-”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Don’t lie! Do you know how hard it is to find a job these days? You’ve probably never earned a cent in your life, have you? Hmph! You’re a parasite living off your husband’s money-”
“I’ve never been married, and I don’t have children. Also, my annual salary is huge. There’s more than 120 billion won in an account the Management Bureau manages for me.”
“...”
Perhaps overwhelmed by the number 120 billion, the Hungry Ghost before me was speechless for a moment.
Was it because I’d experienced so many different things in the hotel?
I could just tell.
That Hungry Ghost had probably once been human.
They seemed to have been a sanitation worker and had probably lived diligently enough.
There were parents like that sometimes.
Perhaps thinking they were teaching their children a lesson, they pointed at people living their lives diligently and said:
“Child, study hard. If you fail to get into a prestigious university, you’ll live like vermin among those lower-class people.”
I didn’t know whether such sigh-inducing words truly helped educate children, but they had clearly scarred that person for life.
Fine. You had a sad life, and things were hard for you. The people who said those things were surely garbage.
But...
“You bitch! How dare you lie to me! I’ll tear off your flesh and swallow it whole! I’ll drink every last drop of your blood-”
--- Slice!
Why the hell had this bastard been picking a fight with me from the start?
I’d never once in my life looked down on someone just because they belonged to a certain profession.
The Management Bureau’s motto was, “All humans are equal!”
There were a few more words after that, but they didn’t say to discriminate against ordinary people based on wealth or occupation either.
There was no reasoning with people like that, so I had no choice but to separate their heads from their bodies.
Afterward, I split open the head of a sales representative who had been slapped five times by customers without being able to protest even once. I shoved an employee who drove their boss’s child to school every day into a manhole.
That was what this place was.
This city was a land of despair, where failed participants wandered in hunger while trapped in the most terrible memories of their lives.
Hungry Ghost Hell.
* * *
- Cha Jin-cheol
“Ha! You motherless bastard... Ahem.”
I had to hold it in.
Come to think of it, I’d never been a particularly refined person, and I swore quite a lot.
It was an excuse, but I often met rough people at the dojo and sparred with them. You could say it became a habit naturally.
After spending time in the hotel with kids and beautiful young ladies... Ahem!
My speech had naturally become more refined while I was with my companions, but now that I was alone and meeting one idiot after another, curses slipped out on their own.
“Y-you fucking bastard! What did I do that you had to burn me with a cigarette-”
There it was again.
Since they were talking about cigarette burns, had they been bullied by school thugs or something?
I ignored them and ran on.
“Why the hell have those bastards been giving me shit since earlier?”
Did I bully them? Did I burn them with cigarettes? I quit smoking a long time ago, you bastard!
“Hoo. Let’s just take a deep breath.”
It was an unpleasant place.
A world full of aimless hatred and hunger.
The first person who appeared before me had been an elderly person carrying a heavy load.
They begged me so desperately to help that I was uneasy, but I carried the load with them anyway. Then they suddenly started ranting about young people and tried to hit me from behind.
Being endlessly exposed to this kind of unexplained malice was enough to drive me insane.
I wanted to attack everyone I saw, but I didn’t want to waste my stamina, so I avoided them whenever possible.
--- Ding-dong!
As soon as I entered a convenience store, something I had experienced countless times repeated itself.
“I’m not selling cigarettes to a minor, you fucking bastard!”
“...”
“Ah, you’re not a minor, you’re an old man? Hey! You think you can push me around because I’m a part-timer? You-”
--- Crash!
Was this one a part-timer who had been bullied by thugs demanding cigarettes and an older drunk customer throwing their weight around?
I was too tired to even think about it, so I threw them outside and examined the goods in the store.
There was nothing here either. It was clearly a place that looked like a convenience store, but there was no food or even a single drink.
I checked restaurants and supermarkets too, but they were all the same.
There was nothing to eat or drink anywhere.
The only things here were Hungry Ghosts consumed by unexplained hatred and hunger.
“Hooo...”
I was still fine.
Only half a day had passed. My throat was just a little dry.
“...”
Could I keep enduring this?
Even if I could endure hunger, could I endure thirst?
“There must be a way out...”
* * *
- Kim Sang-hyeon
The thick smell of blood stung my nose.
I hadn’t bled, nor had I harmed anyone, so the source of the smell was obvious.
The Hungry Ghosts nearby seemed to be killing and eating one another.
--- Thud!
I was beginning to lose hope, but if there was anything to eat or drink, I thought it would be in a large place, so I entered a nearby university.
Perhaps because it was a place where young people in the prime of their lives gathered, I heard some fairly interesting conversations around me.
“A-young! You think I wouldn’t know? I heard everything! What the hell were you doing with your upperclassman Jinho-”
“Yeah! You idiot, everyone knew except you, and you’re only finding out now? You fucking male chauvinist, the size of your dick-”
I resisted the urge to listen for the next sentence.
It had been a truly interesting development, but the man pulled out something sharp, so I didn’t think what came next would be entertaining anymore.
“Is there even a bottle of water around here...?”
I cracked open the door of a laboratory that looked fairly promising and saw a Hungry Ghost busily working inside.
“What?”
“...”
“Y-you bastard, who the hell are you?”
“It’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing? Hey! Do you think I did something terribly wrong? That bastard is a business school professor-”
“Are you a graduate student? Is the person dismembered on the floor playing the role of the professor? Did the professor work you like a slave?”
“Uh, uh, uh...”
“I’ve heard this sort of story around twenty times already. Please get back to your work. Oh, and judging by the situation, the professor is a Hungry Ghost too, so they won’t die easily. It seems they revive soon even if they do die.”
“R-revive?”
“You react to the word ‘revive.’ It doesn’t matter, but is there even a bottle of water nearby?”
“Revive, revive, revive, revive, revive, revive, revi-”
“Another miss.”
--- Creak!
I was growing tired.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Hungry Ghosts’ combat ability was no problem at all.
Like beings doomed to suffer in hell forever, they were immortal and regenerated with time even if their limbs were torn off, but their physical abilities were not much different from those of ordinary humans.
Honestly, even if a hundred of them rushed me at once, I wouldn’t lose a single hair.
The problem was food and water. Wasn’t it a law of the world that even the greatest martial artist under heaven couldn’t survive even a week without water?
“I wonder how the other companions are holding up... I don’t even know whether we can meet.”
Suddenly, hatred powerful enough to overwhelm my soul seized me.
Watching the Hungry Ghosts suffer endlessly made it impossible not to remember my own experiences.
That was why I couldn’t help shouting.
“Why did you create a hell like this!”
Why did the hotel exist, and why did it inflict suffering on so many people?
At that moment, as if mocking me, a notification appeared.
「Mission: Escape Hungry Ghost Hell!
How does it feel to fall into Hungry Ghost Hell as the price for coveting Hotel Secrets?
You are not enjoying it.
Do not worry!
If you follow the instructions, you will be able to return to the embrace of your beloved companions in two or three days at most.
Everyone, what did you think as you watched the Hungry Ghosts of hell?
Do you not pity these wretched beings, trapped in the most resentful memories of their lives and tormented by hunger?
If you can relieve even a fraction of their resentment...
That good deed will become the rope of your salvation.」
Footnotes:
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