WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 369: Room 205, Curse Room - ‘Absolute Master’ (18)
──────
“...Is this as far as it goes?”
It did not take Mi-ro long to give up the chase.
There was a practical reason. The Phantom Demon, borrowing Cha Jin-cheol’s body, was simply far too fast.
Besides, if she waited, she would probably receive at least an escape judgment.
Considering what she had just learned about the Phantom Demon’s nature, there was little chance he would come back on his own.
The Fire Cult Leader, the other threat, must have felt a considerable sense of crisis over what had happened in the capital as well.
More importantly, Mi-ro could not spend all her time in a place like Room 205.
Her one hour was a reserve she had saved for the moment that mattered most.
Just as Mi-ro made up her mind, a faint voice came from between the ruins of the wall.
“Are you one who descended from heaven?”
It was an old man’s voice. One she had heard before.
“Yi Ja-seong?”
“...You know me?”
“How are you still alive?”
Curious, Mi-ro approached and examined the old man more closely.
Not only had his limbs been severed, but his entire body bore signs of torture, wounds that seemed to have been inflicted by the Phantom Demon.
On top of that, he had burns all over his body from the lightning she had brought down.
She could not understand how he had survived.
“The Phantom Demon didn’t kill you. Was he trying to torment you, like he did by keeping the emperor alive until the end?”
“...”
“How did you survive my lightning? Did you have some final move prepared?”
Instead of answering, the old man murmured quietly.
“His nature has not changed.”
“Him? The Phantom Demon?”
“He was always like that. Pretending to be cruel, cunning, and great...”
“...”
“When he is truly in danger, he reveals his true self. A being endlessly ugly and weak. A cruel child who can never grow. That is the Phantom Demon’s true nature.”
Mi-ro finally understood the advice that Ga-in could handle the Phantom Demon if he regained consciousness.
It was not a matter of physical or magical strength, but mental strength.
“I have pondered how I might advance one more step.”
There was a strange fervor in the dying old man’s voice.
As though something mattered more to him than the death fast approaching.
“For a time, I believed that demon’s path was the answer.”
“The Phantom Demon’s path?”
“To gain a mind free from the principles and rules of the secular world. Free from all of it.”
“If you’re asking me, I didn’t become strong that way.”
“Then another thought came to me.”
Yi Ja-seong spoke of his realization as though Mi-ro’s words did not matter.
“Immortality makes humans weak.”
“What?”
Mi-ro knew she did not have much time left.
Even so, she decided to wait another ten seconds.
She was too curious about the old man’s realization.
“Eternal life... weakens the human mind. Because there will be another chance, because it is acceptable to give up this time. That is why immortals become cowardly and ugly every time.”
“Like the Phantom Demon?”
“The fact that there is an end is what truly makes humans great... We... must be given only one chance. At the boundary between life and death, at the very instant that one chance ends... If one can pour everything from an entire lifetime into that instant... that must be the Ultimate of Martial Arts.”
With those words, the old man fell into eternal sleep.
...
Mi-ro sincerely admired the old man’s obsession.
His limbs had already been torn apart when their conversation began, and he had suffered burns across his entire body from the lightning.
He seemed to have barely survived through the final move he had concealed as an Absolute Master, along with a little luck. But that was all.
His death could not be averted.
Even then, until his final breath, the old man had contemplated the Ultimate of Martial Arts.
It was the result of an obsession, or madness, pushed to the extreme in pursuit of the ultimate.
If such a thing was called talent or aptitude, the old man must have been born with the greatest aptitude under heaven.
He simply had not managed to break out of his shell before the end.
Mi-ro lightly shook her head, dismissing her thoughts of the dead. Then she wrote a few notes on a small piece of paper for the powerless self she would soon become again.
...
Her hand stopped at the final sentence.
It was not something she could write carelessly.
Yet she had far too little time left to ponder it endlessly.
In the end, she lowered her hand with a sigh.
“I don’t know. You guys figure that much out on your own.”
--- Click!
The hands of the pocket watch moved past midnight.
The self who had come infinitely close to a demigod returned once more to being a powerless girl.
* * *
- Mi-ro
When my hazy mind returned, I found myself amid ruins.
It looked as though a massive earthquake had destroyed the entire city.
As I stood there blankly, I noticed the scrap of paper in my hand.
“W-what is this?”
The paper contained a message that ‘I’ had left for ‘me.’
...
Early the next morning, I was able to escape the agonizing Room 205.
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 178
Current Location: Level 1, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
The moment I regained consciousness in the corridor, I looked around.
Had we resolved it? Had someone already obtained the Inheritance?
...
Nope.
I’d woken up enough times to know at a glance.
This was an escape, not a resolution, and it did not seem like things had gone very smoothly.
A few people, including Eun-sol and Seung-yeop, were even throwing up.
“Sis! Are you okay?”
“Seung-yeop, why don’t you go take a bath first?”
Fortunately, it did not take long for the two of them to calm down.
Even cruel and painful memories became hazy once one left a Curse Room.
The downside was that clear memories became vague in the process, and sometimes even important memories were forgotten.
Still, without that consideration, no one’s mind would be able to endure the hotel.
While the others looked after Eun-sol and Seung-yeop, Mi-ro was behaving rather strangely.
She stood by herself, deep in thought, muttering as though she were reciting something.
“What are you doing?”
“Room 207... Thirty minutes... Twenty minutes...”
“What?”
“Yi Ja-seong... Yi Ja-seong... What did he say?”
“What are you doing?”
“Aah!”
Mi-ro jumped in surprise, then shoved me away roughly.
When I stared at her in disbelief, she looked somehow embarrassed.
“I-I’ll explain later!”
Mi-ro meant it literally when she said she would explain later.
After everyone had washed up and gathered around the refreshment table, Mi-ro told us an astonishing story.
“Does everyone understand now?”
Mi-ro was beaming, looking quite pleased with herself.
I was sincerely impressed.
A fair amount of her explanation had been difficult to understand, but one thing was certain.
An unforeseen accident had occurred while she was trying to wake me, creating an enormous crisis.
Instead of sitting down in despair, Mi-ro had used her final move and succeeded in saving everyone.
The girl before me still seemed immature. She could be clever, but she also seemed like a child...
Still, I felt relieved. She seemed like someone I could rely on a little.
“You did well!”
Everyone smiled as Eun-sol hugged Mi-ro with a bright smile.
It was time to properly analyze what had happened.
The second attempt at Room 205 could be summarized as follows.
The party had split into two groups. One group held off the Fire Cult at the wall, while the other moved to release me from Sealing.
Fortunately, the Light Empire’s forces had brought the Heavenly Righteous Alliance into the fight and won its battle against the Fire Cult. Backed into a corner, the Fire Cult tried to summon a divine being by constructing a structure called the Heavenly Tower.
The Light Empire’s forces somehow destroyed it, finally driving the Fire Cult into a corner.
Then the Phantom Demon suddenly intervened and massacred our companions.
Their deaths had been so abrupt that many of them did not even know who had killed them.
For example, Grandpa Mook-seong’s memories ended when he went outside the wall and encountered an unidentified Martial World master.
Jin-cheol’s memories similarly ended after he made eye contact with his teacher while walking down the road, and the Doctor’s memories were no different.
It was practically like getting hit by a truck while walking down the street.
The reason such an absurd accident happened was simple.
To wake me, Mi-ro had summoned the Doctor, and he had casually fired Final Flash toward somewhere underground.
But then...
The laser he had casually fired toward some part of the mountain had ‘coincidentally’ hit me dead-on, killing me.
As a result, the Phantom Demon had awakened completely, freed even from the restraint known as ‘me.’
My guess was that even the hotel had not planned for a situation like this.
It was such an absurd story that the Doctor’s mouth fell open.
“Does that make any sense?!”
“Uh? Uh...?”
When Mi-ro became flustered, the Doctor gave a light cough and lowered his tone.
“Ahem. Miss Mi-ro, I’m not interrogating you. I’m saying the odds are simply too absurd.”
That was exactly what I thought.
From what I heard, Mount Cheonjang was enormous, and I had been buried somewhere beneath that huge mountain.
He had fired a laser based on a rough guess, and it had hit me dead-on?
Compared to the size of the mountain, my body would have been no bigger than a grain of sand.
Wouldn’t it have been like shooting a bullet at someone else’s bullet and hitting it in midair?
Mi-ro seemed not to have thought deeply about the probability involved, because she looked deeply flustered.
“I-is that so?”
Then A-ri lightly slapped the table.
“Mi-ro, try to remember that moment carefully.”
“M-my memory?”
“Did a ‘laser’ really hit Ga-in?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve fired Final Flash several times too. Its power is no joke. If it hit a human body, it would vaporize it without leaving a single piece of flesh behind.”
Mi-ro frowned as she answered.
“So there’s no way even Ga-in’s hand could have remained?”
“That’s it.”
We discussed it further, but got nowhere.
Mi-ro’s memory of the situation was too incomplete.
In the end, we had to conclude that we had simply been absurdly unlucky.
“Um... I’m sorry for firing the laser too accurately.”
I stopped the Doctor, who was apologizing to everyone for no apparent reason.
If a laser had pierced my body because of sheer bad luck, then we had simply been terribly unlucky. It was not something he needed to apologize for.
“Oh, come on! You can’t say you’ve properly gained hotel experience until you’ve killed a companion once or twice.”
Everyone gave A-ri, who said that so matter-of-factly, dumbfounded looks. That brought the subject to an end.
The next topic was one everyone had been curious about: Mi-ro from the past.
The fact that Mi-ro from the past had been stored at the Time Lender’s ‘midnight’ had shocked everyone from the start.
For a moment, I was about to ask Mi-ro why she had hidden such serious information.
Eun-sol, sitting beside me, lightly took my hand.
“...”
“She must have been anxious about it too.”
“...I suppose so.”
The others seemed to think similarly. They only looked as though they were debating whether to say something.
Mi-ro, wearing an awkward expression, simply bowed her head once in apology.
Jin-cheol chuckled.
“Well, it’s good that you told us now. Anyway, you saved everyone with that power, so that’s what matters.”
“Thank you!”
Once the mood eased, Mi-ro quickly raised her hand and wrote something on the whiteboard.
1. If we stay still and wait, an escape judgment will appear.
2. Save the time stored at midnight. More than thirty minutes will be needed in Room 207. Nearly twenty minutes have already been used.
3. Yi Ja-seong.
Yi Ja-seong.
Mi-ro stopped writing there.
After tilting her head for a moment, A-ri asked, “What’s this? A record left by Super Saiyan Mi-ro?”
“What’s Super Saiyan?”
Jin-cheol and Grandpa Mook-seong were giggling uncontrollably beside her as Mi-ro stared blankly at A-ri.
Eun-sol sighed and answered.
“It means an incredibly strong Mi-ro. Let’s just call her Midnight Mi-ro. These are records Midnight Mi-ro left behind, right?”
“Yes.”
“Why does it stop at ‘Yi Ja-seong’? Did you forget...”
“N-no!”
Mi-ro firmly denied it.
“The writing on the paper stopped there from the beginning.”
Footnotes:
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