WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 381: Room 205, Curse Room - ‘Absolute Master’ (30)
──────
The old man's eyes were full of malice.
Fear so intense it felt as though his breath would stop began to consume Seung-yeop's mind.
But Seung-yeop still had one final move.
The next moment, the boy's gaze changed completely.
Fear, tension, anger, despair: all those emotions vanished at once, and Primordial Human filled the void they left behind.
His eyes were hazy, as though he had just woken from a dream.
The Phantom Demon's expression twisted the instant he sensed something was wrong, and the boy opened his mouth.
“Uh... So you're Yi Ja-seong? The Phantom Demon? What?”
The Phantom Demon's expression crumpled.
Thanks to his knowledge of the Hotel Party, he recognized that Primordial Human had activated.
“This little bastard really has to be a pain in the ass until the very end!”
What should he do?
Brainwash him? Torture him?
Those things only worked on humans.
What exactly was Primordial Human, from Ga-in's perspective?
Despite the word human in its name, it was far removed from an actual person.
Put kindly, it was like a super-ego. Put badly, it was closer to an AI with an unclear sense of self.
It wasn't without desire or emotion.
But before any of that, it placed its revelation above all else.
The temptations offered by the Mirror Room could break even experienced Management Bureau agents.
To Primordial Human, even such power meant absolutely nothing.
“Can something like this even be brainwashed?”
Should he break his fingers?
Pull out his fingernails one by one?
Keep him alive with Heaven-Defying Soul Reversal, then peel off his skin...
“Huu... Damn it! This fucking bastard!”
The Phantom Demon suppressed the sadism welling up inside him.
His desire for survival overwhelmed every other urge he had.
It was pointless.
If he hurt him, he would surely scream and cry.
If he tempted him with pleasure, he would fall into it like an animal and indulge himself.
Strange, bizarre phenomena would probably occur along the way.
Yet at the final moment, he would ignore everything that had come before and act according to the revelation.
To the Phantom Demon, Primordial Human wasn't unpredictable. It was too predictable, and that was the problem.
It wasn't a power without weaknesses.
He simply had to meet the end condition and bring Primordial Human to an end.
Since it had a cooldown, it wasn't a power that could be used repeatedly.
What was the condition?
The destruction of Room 205? The Time of Choice?
No.
Primordial Human would automatically end when Seung-yeop left the Curse Room, so there was no reason to set a condition like that.
Was it the Phantom Demon's death?
That was strange too.
Given the nature of a being that had transcended the flesh, Primordial Human would have difficulty recognizing the Phantom Demon's death.
Then what condition...
Was this wrong?
Was reaching such a deep conclusion itself the mistake?
This brat had always been a little stupid to begin with!
Maybe trying to analyze him rationally was the mistake.
“Ah, seriously! It's harder to predict you because you're so stupid. Hey, what's the revelation say?”
The boy answered with an innocent expression.
“I was told not to say. But who are you, mister?”
“You little fucking bastard!”
“Why are you swearing at me?”
“Argh!”
“Why are you yelling?”
Irritation seeped all the way into the depths of the Phantom Demon's soul.
He was considering whether to stop thinking about everything else and simply burn this irritating kid alive when his vision twisted and flames began rising everywhere.
At that moment, the Phantom Demon felt not anger, but delight.
“That’s right! You were here!”
Even for the Phantom Demon, breaking through the sensory distortion of Diverse Perspectives wasn't easy, but he didn't need to.
From the moment he appeared here, he had prepared another body.
Just as he had deceived everyone fifteen days ago by controlling Mook-seong's body and Yi Ja-seong's body at the same time.
“Ghk!”
Another martial artist appeared in the Emperor's garden and instantly pinned Song-i down, even through her Protective Suit.
“Hey, miss! Don't be scared. You know I'm not a bad man, right?”
“...”
“I wasn't planning to kill you, only knock you out, but that Protective Suit is really sturdy. Good.”
“...”
Originally, he had planned to coax Seung-yeop into taking him outside.
That was because of the consistent pattern the Hotel Party had shown during the Time of Choice. They received Inheritances one at a time, in order.
According to that pattern, the next in line would be either the boy with Luck or the old agent.
Between the two, Seung-yeop had seemed much easier to control.
But...
If something this troublesome happened, a high school girl could serve as an alternative.
He could simply kill Seung-yeop too and prevent the Time of Choice itself from opening.
“Miss, I have good news for you. You can obtain your second Inheritance now!”
“...”
“Don't tell me you're pretending to be dead. I can clearly hear you breathing...”
“Yi Ja-seong.”
Her voice held surprise, shock, admiration, and curiosity.
Song-i was genuinely fascinated.
“What exactly is your goal?”
“Ahaha! Miss, I've been telling you all along. I'm going to be put inside the Soul Box...”
“Not you, you idiot!”
“...”
“Yi Ja-seong, I don't know how you deceived the Phantom Demon, but you can't deceive me.”
She saw a sword.
It had no physical form, and it was nowhere.
A streak of light from nowhere split the gap between formless souls and drove the Phantom Demon's soul out.
Then...
Yi Ja-seong awoke.
“How did you know I was awake?”
“Thanks to the bracelet's power. The principle is... Ah, whatever! I just knew.”
“...”
The old man silently turned and looked up at the sky.
“Why were you hiding until now? No, more importantly, how did you drive out the Phantom Demon?”
“...”
“Yi Ja-seong? Try being a little more cooperative! Then...”
“Then what? You’ll put me in the Soul Box and let me live?”
Song-i fell silent.
That answer implied a shocking fact.
“You... knew.”
“I knew.”
“About the Hotel.”
“I knew about the Hotel.”
“...”
Song-i was confused.
At least she could understand the Phantom Demon's mindset.
He was a demon obsessed with survival.
But what about Yi Ja-seong?
“...”
“I realized that I was quite a narrow-minded man.”
“Narrow-minded?”
“You must have found me quite laughable.”
“...”
“We all gained our powers from the Hotel. How foolish I must have looked, calling this orthodox and that unorthodox.”
“That’s...”
“It may sound like an excuse, but people are bound by the environment they were born and raised in.”
He looked like an enlightened hermit who had attained some great realization.
That only made Song-i more afraid.
She couldn't predict in the slightest what he might do.
“What do you think?”
The old man turned his gaze toward the other body the Phantom Demon had brought with him.
“Ghk!”
“Are you coming to now?”
“You, Ja-seong! What did you do just now? You couldn't originally do something like...”
“I felt emptiness.”
Silence fell over the garden.
The Phantom Demon, who had been raging in anger, Song-i, who had taken off her helmet at some point, and the boy, who stood there blankly, all listened to the old man's voice.
“Year 673 of the Light Era. Born to the Yi family of Azure Sky City. Father Yi Ji-hon. Mother Yu Ha-yeon. Born into a merchant family, but harboring aspirations for martial arts, he entered the Martial World. He studied under Do Jeong-myeong, the Great Strength Sword Venerable. Then, in Year 713 of the Light Era, he subdued the calamitous Phantom Demon and imprisoned him on Mount Cheonjang.”
...
“What do you think? Not a bad life for an old man, is it?”
“That...”
“It was all a lie. A meaningless illusion, nothing more than a carelessly scribbled sentence.”
The old man's endless emptiness spread in every direction.
Then the only being who could understand that emotion spoke.
“So what?”
“Yu-seong.”
“My entire life was fake? So what? I think now! Therefore I exist, and I am real!”
“Interesting. Did you truly come up with those words yourself?”
“Even if everything is fake... my desire to live is real. So what the hell is the problem?”
Song-i felt a sense of wonder.
Until moments ago, the Phantom Demon had seemed like a demon or a madman. At this moment, he felt like a philosopher contemplating life.
The old man nodded lightly.
“I see. That is the path you have found. Since the will to live is true, everything else is meaningless?”
“That’s right!”
“I reached a realization somewhat different from yours.”
“... I’ll listen.”
“It was meaningless. The Empire, the Heavenly Righteous Alliance, disciples, family, all of it... I realized that I no longer needed to be bound by such things.”
“...”
“A thought suddenly came to me. I have no past.”
“...”
The Phantom Demon wasn't certain about that part.
After all, even those who had come from outside knew little about the Hotel.
Perhaps Room 205 had existed for thousands of years.
But even thinking about it was meaningless.
The Hotel might truly have created everything only a minute ago.
“And since I am fated to vanish within a day or two, I have no future either.”
Since everything had been fabricated, there was no past. Since they would soon die, there was no future.
The Phantom Demon could accept the former, but not the latter.
“No! There is a future, there is! If we use the Soul Box...”
“Yu-seong. How can you trust that knowledge?”
“What?”
The old man's voice carried a faint heat.
“Even after learning that your entire past life was a lie, even after learning of the Hotel, which can mold the whole world you and I can perceive like taffy!”
“Shut up!”
The Phantom Demon knew what Yi Ja-seong was about to say.
That was why he didn't want to hear it.
“Our information is false, while their information is true? How can you possibly be certain of that?”
“I said shut up!”
“If the Creator is cruel, the Creator may have given you the false hope of the Soul Box because the Creator wanted to watch you struggle like this.”
The Phantom Demon was by no means foolish.
He had thought of what Yi Ja-seong had just suggested.
Room 205 was fake, but the Hotel Party was real?
Inheritances could leave this place?
How could he be certain of that either?
The Hotel Party could simply be another fake that believed itself to be real.
There might never have been a way out in the first place.
And even if they got out? Was there any guarantee that the world outside was real?
As long as he clung to life, he could never escape the Creator's game.
That painful realization swallowed the Phantom Demon's mind whole.
“There is no past, and no future. Only this moment is real.”
The old man thinks.
If both past and future were phantoms, only reality remained.
He put everything he had into a single breath.
No.
It was not that he had put it there just now.
Yi Ja-seong realized that his existence had been contained in the fleeting instant when lightning struck all along.
He wanted to show it to the one who had created the Hotel.
The Creator who looked down on all things and mocked everyone.
To the Creator, he might be no more than a lowly worm, but even a worm could bite a person once.
A sword appeared.
It had no physical form, and it was nowhere.
Yi Ja-seong placed everything he had into that sword.
... It wasn't enough.
Everything Yi Ja-seong possessed wasn't enough.
Then a man approached.
“Yu-seong.”
“Put me in it too.”
“...”
The old man silently looked over his body, which was slowly scattering away.
“Those placed inside the sword that exists nowhere will die soon.”
“Hey! You said that stuff doesn't mean anything! Put me in it now!”
“...”
Another immense power.
It did not reach Yi Ja-seong's current level, but it was the only existence that could stand beside him.
The Phantom Demon was placed within the old man's sword.
Only then did the old man realize that the Phantom Demon had finally been freed from his attachment to life.
Then...
Sword aura like starlight stretched toward the sky.
Before long, a crack opened in the sky, and another truth the Creator had hidden revealed itself to the world.
Light enough to illuminate the entire world.
Flame that could burn a star with even a speck of its power.
The greatest being between heaven and earth.
And...
A god in chains.
Asha finally revealed its form.
“Ah...”
A being no human eyes could dare behold.
Yi Ja-seong realized that his retinas had melted and he had gone blind.
A vague realization also seeped into him.
This must be one type of Prisoner Ending that the Hotel Party feared so much.
...
It didn't matter.
This was Room 205, a place where a Prisoner's intervention was restricted.
“...”
Even such a great being was no more than a toy in the hands of the true Creator.
This was that kind of place.
Footnotes:
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