WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 399: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’ (1)
──────
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 232
Current Location: Level 2, Central Hall
Sage’s Advice: 3]
Everyone left their rooms at dawn and headed to the second-floor hall.
Sure enough, two packages had arrived on the enormous table in the center of the hall.
They were the Wing Boots and Eun-sol's enhancement tool.
Eun-sol ran over, unable to hide her excitement, then immediately let out a confused cry.
“There's only one?”
“One?”
“There's only one?”
Only one enhancement tool had come out of Eun-sol's package: a blue-glowing brooch.
...
After Eun-sol demonstrated the tool a few times, everyone understood the situation.
The new tool, ‘Butterfly Dream,’ was a fused tool created by combining the Invisibility Badge, the brooch that summoned the Nightmare Butterfly, and the Chef's Hat.
It could do everything the previous tools could, with additional functions on top of that.
At this point, it was practically on par with an Inheritance.
Eun-sol couldn't hide her delight.
The Wing Boots, on the other hand, gave everyone trouble.
“H-Huh?”
--- Crash!
Several people took turns wearing them, but none could even walk a few steps without rolling across the floor, let alone fly.
Jin-cheol lay on the floor with a hollow expression.
“We'll need a lot of practice.”
“We have to enter a Curse Room today.”
“Yeah.”
In the end, A-ri decided to take the Wing Boots.
She was the only one who had managed anything even close to flying.
With their final preparations complete, everyone stood before Room 206.
“...”
“...”
In the tense silence, Grandpa cleared his throat.
“Ahem. Let's go in. What's the point of standing around here any longer?”
Song-i then asked, “Who do you think will get Sealed this time?”
“Who knows... Ga-in?”
No, absolutely not!
“Grandpa, I got Sealed in both Room 201 and Room 205. Getting Sealed in Room 206 too is a little... If that's how it is, don't call it ‘Sealing.’ Call it ‘Han Ga-in Nerf.’”
“Well, at least I don't think it'll be me.”
--- Creak!
At last, the final Curse Room on the second floor opened.
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 232
Current Location: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
Darkness filled my vision.
A fog-like space where I couldn't see anything.
What?
Don't tell me I'm Sealed again?
Those hotel bastards really-
...
No.
I couldn't think for this long if I were Sealed.
Besides, I could clearly see the name of the Curse Room.
The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days.
It was an incredibly straightforward title.
It seemed to mean I had to stop the Demon King's resurrection within the hundred-day time limit.
At that moment, the fog around me began to swirl.
Then...
A mysterious voice echoed from somewhere.
“We pray amid the coming destruction. May unshakable reason uphold the world. May the chaos filling the universe not invade our small cage.”
Who was that?
“O Indomitable Reason! Protect the world with righteous reason!”
The instant those words rang out, an indescribable pressure forced me to my knees.
There was light.
The light was the embodiment of humanity's accumulated rationality, a firm rejection of all things supernatural.
I immediately understood what I had to do.
‘Advice, I need it now! Anything! I'll burn through all three, so please give me a useful answer!’
[Advice: 3 -> 0]
[Check the scenario. Afterward, do what you do best.]
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 235
Current Location: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
To summarize the information provided by Scenario Understanding on the first day and my experiences over the past three days:
First, every “supernatural” means had stopped working.
The Grimoire didn't react at all, and the Status Window had been reduced to a hologram that only showed the date.
Naturally, my Teleportation tattoo didn't work either.
The reason was obvious. It was because of Indomitable Reason, which had activated the moment we entered.
Second, the place where I woke up was a city called Paradise.
Paradise divided humans into four classes, and I was a Fourth-Class Citizen.
Third, as far as I knew, Paradise was the most hellish place in the world.
--- Clang! Clang!
“Ugh... Is it morning already?”
“I feel like I just fell asleep.”
“Fuck! Even if our sleep time is short, this is way too shor-”
- Fourth-Class Citizen Paulo, profanity detected.
“H-Huh? That was just a mistake-”
- Today's lunch is revoked.
We had only been given five hours of sleep the night before.
That was because our sleep time had been cut by twenty percent for failing to meet the day's quota.
“Assembly! Assembly!”
Noisy shouts rang out from all around.
Soon, people with utterly exhausted expressions emerged from the communal dormitory and began walking.
Some swayed because they couldn't fight off their sleepiness. Whenever that happened, the large foreman shouted harshly and kicked them.
“You lazy bastards! If the Progenitor knew, they would say vermin like you don't deserve a single bowl of porridge!”
The Labor Reeducation of District 13, where I lived, had begun.
I forced myself to hold on to my hazy mind as I rode a cart along the rails toward the mine.
Then...
--- Clink! Clink!
Half-naked people began swinging pickaxes all around me.
My job was a little better than theirs. After the miners dug up ore full of impurities, I mixed it with water and processed it somehow.
“Hey! Han Ga-in!”
“... Yes.”
“Are you going to work like that? You're spilling all that precious Mirconium!”
“I'm sorry. I'll concentrate more-”
“You don't get lunch today.”
“...”
I felt like I was losing my mind.
* * *
After the morning shift ended, the cart took us deeper into the coal mine.
My job here was to use a thick shovel to clear away sand falling from all directions.
An elderly miner spoke with a tired expression. “Foreman, water... Just a sip of water...”
The foreman guarding the water container grew irritated and kicked the elderly miner.
“What water? Shut up, will you?”
Another miner who saw it couldn't hold back.
“P-Peterson! We've already been working for three hours. How are we supposed to last on three hundred milliliters of water?”
At those words, Peterson, the foreman, glared at the miner.
“What did you say? Isn't this a problem because you bastards slacked off yesterday?”
“Slacked off-”
“You fell short of the quota by four percent! Roy, shut up and get back to work. If you miss the quota again today, you'll lose your meals next time too!”
Intimidated by Peterson's vehemence, every miner lowered their head and busied themselves avoiding the foreman's gaze.
“Hmph. What a bunch of vermin!”
I felt like I was starting to lose my senses.
* * *
As I returned after finishing the evening shift, I carefully thought things through.
What the hell was going on?
Why had I been dropped into this horrible city, given the horrible status of a Fourth-Class Citizen, and made to work all day?
The keywords Revelation of Heavenly Secrets gave me for Room 206 were as follows.
‘Three-way conflict, a common trope in fiction, check the date regularly.’
What did that have to do with this shitty reality?
Who were the three parties, and what common trope explained this situation?
I checked the date on my Status Window every day, but there was no problem with it.
That wasn't my only question.
The more I examined things one by one, the more questions I had instead of answers.
The room's title was ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days,’ but what exactly was this Demon King?
I asked the miners who shared my room, but none of them knew.
They even made fun of me, asking whether I still believed in things like that despite not being a child anymore.
I didn't care about NPCs laughing at me.
What really confused me was that three days had passed, and I hadn't seen a single one of my companions.
Where had they all gone?
Had they become Fourth-Class Citizens like me and been swinging pickaxes until they dropped?
Or were they second-class or third-class citizens, handling work inside the city?
First-class citizens, the rulers of all Paradise?
I didn't know.
If my Status Window had been working properly, I could have checked my companions' locations. But the Status Window itself had become like an opaque clock, leaving me with no way to check anything.
Barely holding on to my fading mind, I returned to the communal dormitory with the other miners.
“What the hell is this now?”
“Fuck! We're short on the quota again?”
“That's ridiculous! We all saw it earlier, didn't we? We filled the carts without a single gap-”
“Foreman, that bastard!”
“Foreman?”
“That bastard definitely skimmed some off!”
The miners, who had been too exhausted to move properly, suddenly brimmed with energy.
The notice that had caused it contained a simple message.
[Repeated quota violation. Sleep time will be reduced by ten percent for the next two days.]
At that moment, it was hard to suppress the rage boiling up from the depths of my soul.
If someone like that foreman showed up in front of me again, I wanted to beat him to death without caring what happened afterward.
“Hey! At times like this, we should get into bed as soon as possible!”
Lying in bed, I thought about the suffering of the past three days.
The hellish mining labor that continued from morning to night every day.
The watery corn porridge that someone had clearly stolen ingredients from, and chunks of rancid fat that passed for meals.
At best, we got five hours of sleep, and it was cut down practically every day.
On top of that, the foreman even embezzled the minerals we had worked so hard to mine.
The confusion that had filled my mind slowly began to fade.
At some point, words like Demon King and Revelation of Heavenly Secrets no longer came to mind.
I remembered the advice the Owl had given me before my Status Window went wrong.
‘Do what you do best.’
What I did best.
...
The situation was too complicated to understand?
No. That wasn't it.
The situation was incredibly simple.
What I had to do was clear too.
A single red flag flashed through my mind.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Footnotes:
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