WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 410: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’ (12)
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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 272 (+40)
Current Location: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 1]
- Han Ga-in
The moment the restaurant ceiling collapsed, Mi-ro crashed onto a table like a missile falling from the sky.
“Eek! M-Mi-ro?”
Elena screamed and took a step back.
Something was wrong with Mi-ro.
Her eyes were unfocused, her skin was paler than usual, and her movements were strangely awkward.
She looked like a puppet controlled by someone else.
“Who are you? Are you really Mi-ro?”
--- Creak!
A strange sound came from her joints.
The bizarre noise shook the entire restaurant.
“Take this!”
--- Clang!
With a shout, Elena swung a chair down at her, but it sounded as though she had struck metal.
“S-She’s become incredibly tough! Maybe you should try Possession-”
Instead of answering, I grabbed Elena’s arm and pulled her away.
Mi-ro hadn’t been released from Sealing.
Someone, probably the Demon King, was controlling that body.
Entering it in this situation would be dangerous in its own way.
Possession wasn’t easy in the first place because of Mi-ro’s blessing, Immutability.
“Let’s get out of here first!”
The moment I kicked open the restaurant door, a house-sized crocodile turned toward us.
I hesitated for an instant.
Was that thing also being directly controlled by the Demon King, like Mi-ro?
If so, Possession could be dangerous.
--- Flutter!
Pitch-black energy stretched out from the Book and took control of the crocodile’s body.
Soon, the monstrous crocodile moved to the other side and clamped down on the leg of a giant covered in long, snow-white fur.
“Run!”
The city outside was a hell beyond description.
“Yohoho! Today’s a festival!”
Right in front of me, a skeletal captain over three meters tall beheaded a citizen with a scimitar, then swallowed the head whole.
Beside the captain, a monster with a snake’s body and a human face swallowed a child alive.
Even now, a cargo truck sprouting spider legs rolled along on its side, crushing people beneath it.
Watching the scene, Elena finally began to vomit.
“Urgh!”
I thought I’d seen plenty of gruesome things, but this hell had crossed far too many lines.
Suppressing the urge to vomit, I used the Grimoire’s power to make the skeletal captain slice apart the snake.
“Ugh!”
“Ga-in?”
A sudden headache struck.
I was afraid the Demon King would control me if I used Possession, so I’d used the Power of the Avatar repeatedly instead.
The Power of the Avatar was something I could use for ten minutes at most.
It wasn’t meant to be used over and over.
“A-Are there any others?”
“Seung-yeop...”
“What?”
“Seung-yeop is alive!”
Everyone else, including A-ri, was dead.
「Companion Location Information (*)
Park Seung-yeop: Outside Paradise」
There was no specific location. All it said was that he was outside Paradise.
According to A-ri, Seung-yeop had already gone missing before the regression.
Had he gone outside the city back then? If so, he wouldn’t have been affected by the regression.
“Isn’t that... a relief?”
“It’s a disaster!”
What relief?
Part of me had hoped Seung-yeop, who had been alone, might have escaped.
If the Prisoner revived and massacred the living, Seung-yeop would obviously die too!
We had to do something somehow.
「Citizens who are still alive, listen carefully! Bite down hard on your tongues and drop dead right now!」
A deranged broadcast echoed from a building even in the middle of all this.
Covering my ears, I ran frantically with Elena and thought.
What the hell were we supposed to do?
Elena asked, “D-Don’t you need to use Descent?”
“...”
I’d thought of that! I’d been thinking about it this whole time!
But when was I supposed to use it?
Was I meant to use it now, just because monsters were everywhere?
These monsters clearly looked like summoned creatures the Demon King had called forth!
Descent’s power definitely wasn’t infinite, and it had a strict time limit!
What if I spent all of Descent’s power killing summoned creatures?
What if the Demon King’s true body appeared after that?
Elena understood my hesitation.
“Can’t you use it now? Do you have to wait until after the Demon King appears?”
That was a problem too, but could I even defeat the Demon King if I used it?
The Demon King had turned the entire city into hell before even revealing its true body.
It was obviously on a completely different level from trash like Apollion, who had been outside the Hotel!
“Haaah...!”
I was scared.
Fear I hadn’t felt in a long time seemed ready to eat away at my heart.
The Prisoner was about to revive.
Seung-yeop hadn’t escaped.
I couldn’t even figure out when to use Descent.
--- Ooooooh!
A strange song echoed from somewhere.
As though answering it, a gloomy hymn rang out across the entire city.
Citizens who had been hiding everywhere emerged from buildings with ecstatic expressions and slowly began to float into the sky.
Ah, salvation. The Rapture!
Didn’t the Gospels say that when Jesus returned, the faithful would ascend to heaven?
Therefore, I too had to accept the call.
Surely, there would be a kingdom in that sky for everyone-
--- Slap!
“Ah, ah, ah...”
“Ga-in, get a hold of yourself.”
“...”
I had almost been enthralled in that short moment.
No matter how much the Status Window’s Filter protected my mind, the problem ultimately lay within my own heart.
A weak mind shaken by fear couldn’t endure the Demon King’s temptation.
Elena looked disgusted, but she didn’t seem afraid.
That struck me as incredibly strange.
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Not that much.”
“H-How? What are you trusting in? No one escaped, and we have to stop that with our own strength! The timing is awkward for using Descent too-”
“Hasn’t something like this happened before?”
“What-”
“When the Sea God revived in Room 202, when all of us were fooled by the whale in Room 203. Weren’t those situations about as hopeless?”
“...”
“Of course, there’s a difference between you and me. At your core, you’re someone who believes in yourself. I’m not.”
I wasn’t stupid enough not to understand what she meant.
The person I generally trusted was me.
The person Elena trusted was also me.
I’d begun trembling in fear because I couldn’t trust myself, but Elena wasn’t terribly afraid because she trusted me.
What kind of irony was that?
--- Rumble!
Lightning seemed to strike from the sky, and then bizarre Yokai with red wings began descending.
--- Hahahaha!
Laughter shook heaven and earth. The demons that had come down from the sky smiled as they looked upon the toys filling the ground.
Survivors who had remained alive through luck, or misfortune, suffered as the devils abused them for their amusement.
And then...
Mi-ro fell from the sky again with a bolt of lightning.
“H-Hello.”
Her movements had been awkward before, but now she had begun to speak.
Had it grown more accustomed to controlling Mi-ro?
An ominous wave began to flow from Elena’s body.
“Elena...”
“I’ll hold out, so run. It seems like you need time, Ga-in. Oh!”
Elena smiled faintly.
“I just thought of this. Isn’t this the ‘original Ga-in’?”
* * *
I ran along the road, which had begun to writhe, and thought.
‘Original Ga-in.’
What did she mean by that?
... Actually, I knew.
I’d sensed subtle changes in myself recently too.
Whenever I looked at Elena or A-ri, my heart pounded more violently than usual.
When I saw the demons and monsters filling the city, fear came as naturally as breathing.
Over the past few days, my heart had slowly returned to that of a first-year student at K University.
Why?
Because Indomitable Reason had severed the connection between me and the Grimoire for a long time.
“They said the Grimoire had dyed me black, didn’t they?”
I vaguely understood what that meant.
Then a sad realization flashed through my mind.
“...”
--- Yohoho! Where are you hiding, my cute little friends!
The Han Ga-in who had been a first-year student at K University wasn’t needed in the Hotel.
What was needed here was a mage who had abandoned his humanity.
--- Flutter!
I summoned the Grimoire again and gripped it tightly with both hands.
* * *
“Eek!”
“Hngh! Sniff...”
“Aah... Aah...”
The entire underground area was filled with people’s screams.
My ears hurt, but that didn’t mean I could stop the “work.”
Soon, the mass of writhing tentacles continued its work.
“How many more do I have to put in? I’ve already put in quite a lot!”
Just as I was beginning to grow impatient, I heard someone’s footsteps behind me.
“This is unbelievable.”
Who was that?
A cute girl in her late teens with short brown hair.
She was fairly pretty, but nowhere near A-ri or Mi-ro.
“Are you Kadyrov’s successor or something?”
“What are you talking about? Kadyrov is-”
The moment I stopped speaking, she gave a small laugh.
“You and that blonde girl killed Kadyrov. I know all about it. Back then, I had expectations.”
“Expectations?”
“I thought you might have some grand vision to preserve the city. That’s why I left you alone.”
The girl looked around with an empty expression.
“Eek!”
At that moment, the writhing tentacles lifted an old woman and threw her toward the smoldering remains of Indomitable Reason.
“... So you’re the same after all. You’re trying to activate Indomitable Reason again?”
It was cruel, but there was no other choice for now.
Didn’t the mayor pour people into Indomitable Reason every day because he couldn’t find another way either?
“Is there another way?”
“I don’t know either. I didn’t know, and there was nothing I could do, so I left the mayor alone... If this was going to happen, why did you kill the mayor?”
“Because the mayor tried to kill me.”
She looked utterly hollow.
“That was all. Ah...”
“It’s not like I don’t have a plan.”
“A plan?”
“If I can somehow activate Indomitable Reason again, won’t a large number of the monsters remaining in the city disappear?”
“The Demon King has already awakened. There’s no turning it back.”
“I figured as much.”
“What are you even trying to say-”
“You’re the Progenitor, right? I thought about it for a long time, and the only person who could suddenly appear in this setup was the Progenitor.”
“...”
“A three-way battle, a cliché from fiction. Is this another regression, possession, and reincarnation story? The mayor regressed, and we experienced possession. Then did you reincarnate?”
“W-What are you talking about?”
“So it’s true. You’ve survived all this time through repeated reincarnation? It doesn’t matter. If you want to stop everything from ending, you’d better help me.”
“What?”
“There’s nothing we can do while monsters are swarming the city like this. But if we can clear them out somehow and make it a one-on-one fight with the Demon King, I have a move of my own.”
“...”
“So help me. Indomitable Reason and the Soul Furnace went out, and that’s why this happened. We need to light the fire again, don’t we?”
Suddenly, I realized the Progenitor’s face had filled with despair.
For someone who had once risen to save the world, she seemed remarkably weak-willed.
She muttered in a voice that sounded ready to break into tears.
“How much more do we have to offer?”
I knew the clear answer to that.
“As much as necessary.”
Footnotes:
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