WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 362: Room 205, Curse Room - ‘Absolute Master’ (11)

──────

- Lee Eun-sol

The Tang dynasty poet Cao Song once said, “One general achieves glory, and ten thousand bones wither.”

I only truly understood those words when I found myself looking down at the battlefield from atop the wall.

Every moment, soldiers of the Empire and the Fire Cult vanished, becoming fertilizer for the earth.

The mountain of white bones piling up in real time was the cradle where great generals were born. The laughter of superhumans who could cut down three or four soldiers with a single swing echoed across the battlefield.

If there was one fortunate thing, it was that my companions belonged among the great generals rather than the white bones.

“Bwahahaha!”

A giant man’s earth-shaking laughter reached even my ears.

Cha Jin-cheol rampaged like a wolf among sheep, crushing hundreds of soldiers. He looked less like a person and more like a killing machine.

A memory from long ago came to mind.

If we returned to who we had been on the first day we entered the hotel...

Could Cha Jin-cheol from back then have laughed while rampaging across a battlefield like he did now?

Knowing it was a pointless thought, I shook my head.

We were nothing like we used to be, and that didn’t apply to Ga-in alone.

“Wow...”

A gasp slipped out.

Just moments ago, Cha Jin-cheol had crushed a Fire Cult expert’s torso, armor and all, with his bare fist.

Apparently, someone had given that punch the grand name Heaven-Shattering Great Strength Fist. It was ridiculous, but I understood why.

I mean, how could a punch that crushed an armored expert look ordinary?

It looked like a legendary ultimate art passed down through generations in the Big Dipper Grand General’s family.

Jin-cheol had definitely been embarrassed when he first heard the name, but he didn’t seem embarrassed anymore.

He even shouted, “Heaven-Shattering Great Strength Fist!” as he threw his punches.

Unlike Jin-cheol, Grandfather seemed much the same as before, at least mentally.

Grandfather was fighting far better than I’d expected.

It was a strange thing to say while looking at a hell overflowing with flesh, blood, bones, and brains, but Grandfather was fighting much more “enjoyably” than Jin-cheol.

They said that if your head was bad, your body suffered. Put another way, if your body was bad, your head suffered.

Jin-cheol could simply swing his weapon with all his strength and run at full speed, and that alone would become an ultimate art and a movement technique. Grandfather’s situation was different.

Grandfather truly had to fight while desperately using his head. Even as I thought that, Grandfather began fighting another Fire Cult expert.

A man in a black cloak approached Grandfather, swinging a milky-white crescent blade.

The man shouted something and moved the crescent blade in a complex pattern, sending out dozens of blade winds. Grandfather curled into himself like a turtle and took as many of them as possible with his armor.

The next moment, Grandfather’s crouched body sprang open like a coil. His right arm, the Arm of an Abras Warrior brimming with monstrous strength, shot forward. The Fangtian Halberd it gripped flew toward the Fire Cult expert.

The opponent tried to block the halberd with a crescent blade, but I’d seen it many times from above.

Even a capable expert couldn’t withstand the strength of Grandfather’s right arm.

Overpowered, the opponent rolled across the ground in panic, barely evading Grandfather’s attacks.

Having narrowly escaped danger, the opponent looked as though they’d made up their mind. Gripping the crescent blade in both hands, they began chanting some kind of scripture.

It was definitely an unfamiliar technique!

As extreme tension seized Grandfather, the Fire Cult expert, and even me watching the fight...

Grandfather pulled his left hand from inside his robes and snapped his fingers once. The Fire Cult expert’s head exploded at once.

Grandfather really was a good fighter.

A strong frame that made age seem meaningless, iron armor covering the entire body.

Then there was the majestic Fangtian Halberd, so imposing that it was hard to believe a person could wield it one-handed!

Didn’t Grandfather look exactly like the legendary Lü Bu reborn?

Grandfather looked like that as the Fangtian Halberd swept through the air, acting as though a mythical duel was about to begin.

Grandfather only acted the part, though.

Whenever an opponent, bewitched by that imposing appearance, seemed to be preparing an ultimate move, Grandfather shot them without hesitation.

To martial artists of this era, a twenty-first-century handgun was the very weapon of the devil, beyond anything they could imagine.

If Grandfather openly drew it, they would sense danger and react. But when Grandfather struck a pose with the Fangtian Halberd, then suddenly pulled the trigger the moment an opening appeared, expert or not, they died on the spot.

“Grandfather talked to Mr. Sang-hyeon about proper martial arts and all that, yet fights like that... Still, it’s good Grandfather is fighting well.”

The battlefield situation wasn’t bad.

The Empire’s forces held the wall while the Fire Cult’s army pressed toward the capital.

The Fire Cult still overwhelmingly outnumbered them to the point there was no comparison, but the number of ordinary soldiers didn’t matter much on this stage.

What mattered was the number of experts, and once the Heavenly Righteous Alliance joined us, we were no longer outmatched in the quality of our forces.

Then I spotted a man.

He looked to be in his forties or fifties, a middle-aged man dressed in an elegant robe as he surveyed the battlefield.

His appearance matched Elena’s description, so I concentrated just in case.

He.

Was looking.

At me.

The Fire Cult Leader was looking at me.

Even in the hell where the lives of nameless soldiers faded as lightly as feathers, the two people standing at opposite extremes looked at one another.

The man reflected in the woman’s eyes was so handsome that, in the modern world, he could have been a movie star, only older.

The woman reflected in the man’s eyes stood atop the massive wall, looking down on the ground with an arrogant air, as though she were imitating a god.

The man’s lips moved.

I hadn’t learned lip-reading, but the movement was simple enough to understand.

‘Greetings?’

The next moment, incomprehensible malice seized my throat.

“Ghk! Hhk!”

It felt as if someone had grabbed my neck and was violently shaking me!

“G-Gate Lord! Guards! Is anyone there?!”

The nearby guards panicked and tried to save me, but they were no help at all.

How could ordinary people possibly imagine it?

That Jo Won-hong, the Fire Cult Leader, was trying to kill me from several kilometers away!

“Ghhk!”

Was I going to die like this in this run?

It felt like he was three or four kilometers away. Had looking at Jo Won-hong once been a mistake serious enough to kill me?

What kind of...

“Haah!”

A furious roar rang out. Warm energy like a spring breeze wrapped around me, and my body was free again.

The malice that had gripped my throat vanished without a trace.

Yi Ja-seong had appeared.

“Th-thank you.”

“Steady yourself. To think the Cult Leader could apply Hundred-Step Killing in such a way...”

“Hundred-Step Killing? Is it a technique that kills someone from a hundred steps away, around a hundred meters?”

“So I believed, but now I see that distance isn’t the issue. It seems the condition for casting it is meeting the target’s gaze.”

“...”

“It is a bad matchup for the Harmonious Gate Lord’s Clairvoyance. Do not look upon the Cult Leader when I am not there.”

“I’ll remember that. Thank you for saving me.”

“So many of the Alliance’s martial artists have already died...”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“...”

“They took up their swords of their own will, saying they would save their country. What could you possibly have to apologize for? Surely you don’t think you forced the Heavenly Righteous Alliance’s martial artists onto the battlefield?”

“No.”

“For the past eight months, the Fire Cult has risen from its crouch and begun turning heaven and earth upside down. When that happened, no small number of the Alliance’s martial artists wished to take up their swords and step into mountains of blades and forests of swords.”

“Did you stop them?”

“I thought this Empire needed to be overturned from its roots. Was I wrong?”

“...”

“Even now, I do not know whether you, whether the young emperor, can truly be said to be better than the Fire Cult Leader...”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Gate Lord, allow me one piece of advice.”

“I’ll listen.”

“The power Jo Won-hong and the Fire Cult have in reserve truly knows no end... Do not forget that they have received the aid of an ominous god for eight hundred years.”

“...”

With those words, Yi Ja-seong left.

“Whew...”

Once the tension drained from me, I let out a small sigh.

A few days ago, Mr. Sang-hyeon had personally secured the Heavenly Righteous Alliance’s cooperation, yet he still seemed puzzled.

It had come far too easily.

Grandfather explained it as “the nature of martial artists,” and that probably played a part.

But there was a bigger reason.

When I thought about it, most of the Heavenly Righteous Alliance’s martial artists were citizens of the Light Empire too.

Wouldn’t they have patriotism as well?

No matter how incompetent the imperial family had been for so long, when it truly seemed the country would fall, there would always be people who rose up to protect it.

The Alliance Leader had held them back until now, but there was a limit.

In other words, the Heavenly Righteous Alliance had wanted to fight to protect the Empire from the very beginning.

They simply had no reason to forgive the imperial family and leap into battle.

“When we go to the next run, should I tell Seung-yeop to send the Heavenly Righteous Alliance a handwritten apology as soon as we start?”

* * *

- Yoo Song-i

Only after arriving in Henan Province, near Mount Cheonjang where Ga-in was sleeping, did I realize something.

Mount Cheonjang wasn’t some neighborhood hill.

Everest! Okay, that was an exaggeration, but it was a mountain so vast that I couldn’t take it all in at a glance.

Of course, searching a mountain like that required a huge amount of supplies, starting with food. We didn’t have enough money to buy all of it.

“Pero, bring that cart too.”

“Please! How can you take the cart as well? It’s my capital for business, miss...”

“... O-okay. We’ll take the cart from that stall over th-”

“Waaaah!”

In my own way, I tried to loot fairly.

If I took all of one person’s possessions, how were they supposed to live?

Taking the goods from a stall wasn’t enough. If I stripped away the cart beneath it too, wasn’t I just telling that merchant to die?

I felt so bad about that, so I tried to spread out the loot “appropriately” among as many people as possible.

As a result, countless people collapsed to the ground and began crying.

“... It’s all the hotel’s fault!”

If they’d put plenty of gold and silver coins in my pockets beforehand, I wouldn’t have had to become such a bad person!

While I stood there flustered and unsure what to do, Mi-ro handled things with incredible speed and efficiency.

“Fill the cart with what you think we need for hiking.”

“Elder! How can there be no law or order-”

“Haaah... I wanted to endure this, but it can’t be helped. The White Dragon’s Wrath will-”

“W-we’ll fill it!”

What the hell was the White Dragon’s Wrath?

Why was she so deeply invested in robbing people?

Just when I was starting to lose strength and wanted to collapse too, A-ri appeared with a pale-faced man.

“...”

“He’s been gathering herbs on Mount Cheonjang for a long time. I thought he’d know the terrain well, so I brought him.”

“Hello.”

“I-if you spare my life, I’ll serve you with everything I have!”

“We’ll spare you. But...”

“Y-yes?”

“Do you have any money?”

I became light-headed.

By the time the looting ended, one fact gave me at least a little comfort.

At least we hadn’t killed or hurt anyone.

* * *

Around evening, I discussed things with A-ri as we climbed Mount Cheonjang.

“Where do you think it is? I can’t tell even after looking at the map.”

“I’m not sure... There are a few places I’ve been watching, but none I’m confident about.”

“Whew...”

“I’m more worried about something else.”

I felt the same. The information Ga-in had obtained through advice came back to me.

“Two threatening masters. Beware of ambushes from the shadows. At least they didn’t attack us in Henan Province.”

“They probably want to keep the fact that Mount Cheonjang is the Phantom Demon’s sealed area completely hidden. They wouldn’t want to make things worse by fighting us where everyone could see.”

Which meant they intended to kill us on this vast, perilous mountain.

“Phantom Demon Punch!”

--- Boom!

A thick tree fell backward with a tremendous crash.

“...”

“A-A-ri! Look! I split a tree with my punch!”

“Wow! Mi-ro, that’s amazing!”

It was such a halfhearted answer, yet Mi-ro happily began destroying the natural surroundings.

“... Why is she acting like that?”

“It’s her first time wearing a Protective Suit. Children can act that way when they gain special powers.”

“Seung-yeop wasn’t that bad.”

“I think Mi-ro’s heart is more innocent.”

“... Aren’t we moving around too noisily?”

“Surely you’re not worried about being discovered now?”

The moment we overturned the market inside the castle, any plan of hiding in the mountain range and infiltrating was already long gone.

Honestly, even if we hadn’t done that, the majestic White Dragon Divine Armor wasn’t something anyone could hide from others.

“You need to come this way!”

Then a frightened voice, so faint it was almost frail, called out.

The herb gatherer we had brought as a guide began leading us down a side path.

“Hm...”

A-ri made a strangely meaningful sound.

Footnotes:

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