WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 419: Room 104, Curse Room - ‘Hotel High, the Prestigious Academy’ Re (18)
──────
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 282
Current Location: Level 1, Room 104 - Curse Room ‘Hotel High, the Prestigious Academy’
Sage’s Advice: X]
- Han Ga-in
...
I came to my senses on a dark staircase.
The date on the Status Window flashed past, and Mi-ro was staring at me as if frightened.
Time Lender.
“It doesn't look like we're in the middle of a fight.”
“No! We're not.”
“Tell me what's happening.”
Mi-ro urgently explained the situation.
Quite a bit of time had already passed since entry into Room 104. A-ri and Mi-ro had infiltrated the Sacred Domain together.
The problem was that Aurelia, who seemed to have absorbed Arima, had told only Mi-ro to go down.
Fighting the Saintess underground was far too risky.
So Mi-ro had pretended to accept the Saintess's words, then summoned me while heading down alone.
“What is this? Why can't A-ri go, but I can-”
“Be quiet for a moment. Let me think.”
“Okay.”
What lay underground was probably the Sacred Sun, an aspect of the Lord.
“The reason you can go underground while A-ri can't is probably because of your blessing. Immutability seems to give you powerful resistance against supernatural forces.”
“T-then should I go down alone?”
“Wait.”
Every question surrounding Room 104 came down to one thing: what exactly was the Sacred Sun?
That meant someone needed to take the risk and face it at least once.
Still, was it really right for Mi-ro to go down there?
“... Could it be?”
“Ga-in! Did you figure something out? Did something-”
“At first, I thought the Lord might have chosen you instead of me.”
“Chosen me instead of you?”
Let's think back.
Why had the Lord chosen me in the first place?
The question itself had been wrong from the beginning.
During the first attempt at Room 104, the Lord hadn't chosen Han Ga-in.
I killed Aurelia underground and fulfilled the condition for the Sacred Sun to appear. Then the Lord granted me Descent.
Had the Lord expected Han Ga-in to kill Aurelia from the moment the Hotel Party entered Room 104?
That was far too fatalistic an interpretation.
Even the Hotel, which imprisoned the Prisoner, couldn't perfectly predict how we would resolve a Curse Room. Naturally, that was impossible for a Prisoner as well.
The Lord hadn't chosen Han Ga-in. The Lord had chosen whoever first summoned the Sacred Sun underground and granted that person Descent.
The Lord only began working to secure Han Ga-in's victory from the second attempt onward.
“The more I think about it, the less likely that seems. The Lord's choice ended the moment Descent was granted. Maybe I'm the only one who can fully use the Sacred Sun because I've used Descent before.”
“T-then why did the Lord tell me to come down?”
“The Lord didn't tell you to come down. Aurelia got information about us through Arima, right? Naturally, she must have passed that information on to the Lord too.”
Mi-ro's eyes widened.
“Ah! Because the Lord learned about Time Lender!”
“That's why I'll be the one going down from now on.”
The confusion in Mi-ro's eyes cleared, and she smiled happily.
“Have a safe trip! I'll wait here!”
“Okay.”
I didn't tell Mi-ro, but another thought had crossed my mind.
What if the Lord had truly chosen Mi-ro as the Sacred Sun's new owner?
Several possibilities came to mind there too...
I stopped thinking about it.
I had to obtain Room 104's Inheritance.
--- Click!
The door to the sacred land opened.
I arrived in Paradise.
...
...
...
* * *
--- Click!
“Ga-in! What happened-”
“Gah!”
My head felt like it was about to burst.
A world filled with light, a land no living person could reach!
The revulsion Paradise created felt as though it would grind up and devour my brain.
“Ga-in?”
“I knew that bastard Lord was grotesque, but-”
“C-calm down! There isn't much time!”
Time, right. Time!
I was a Summoned Entity called forth by Mi-ro's Inheritance, so I couldn't exist for more than an hour.
“How much time has passed?”
“Fifty-four minutes!”
I had five minutes and a few seconds left. There was no time to hesitate.
“To me...”
“Sorry, Mi-ro. It's hard to explain this to you.”
I saw it, felt it, understood it.
Why the Sacred Sun existed, the Lord's purpose!
I understood everything about Room 104.
I even understood what the Lord had meant by a game where everyone could win, something it had emphasized so strongly.
That being, whether it was a mad god or a god of light, made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
The deal was made.
“Ga-in?”
I finally understood the secrecy of the Management Bureau's agents.
Not everyone needed to know what I had learned.
For truly dreadful knowledge, it was enough for only those who needed to know to know it.
“Is that... a pen?”
I wrote and wrote about everything in Room 104.
“What did you see that made you like this?”
A thought suddenly occurred to me.
I had returned to this room to obtain the Sacred Sun.
But could I use it after learning the truth behind this horrible monstrosity?
“Huh? Are you erasing it? Did you write something wrong?”
For dreadful truths, it was enough for only those who needed to know to know them.
And perhaps Han Ga-in didn't need to be one of those people.
“Mi-ro. Give this note to Aurelia.”
“What did you write?”
“Just give it to her. Don't read it.”
“... Okay.”
As the hour ended and my consciousness faded, I thought:
At last, I was free from that painful memory.
The Han Ga-in in the Old School Building would never know what I saw today.
I decided to grant myself the Paradise of Ignorance.
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 282
Current Location: Level 1, Room 104 - Curse Room ‘Hotel High, the Prestigious Academy’
Sage’s Advice: X]
- Han Ga-in
I was resting in an empty classroom in the Old School Building.
“Huh? Huh? What is this?”
An enormous amount of text began appearing on the Status Window.
The only one who could do this was the “me” summoned by Time Lender.
...
“...”
The contents themselves weren't that surprising.
The immortal earthly paradise the Lord had promised the believers truly existed.
Those who had served the Lord for ages moved into the Paradise inside the Sacred Sun after death.
The believers, filled with Faith in the Lord, were, in a manner of speaking, individual dots.
Countless dots gathered together to create an aspect of the Lord. That was the Sacred Sun.
There was various other information written there as well.
“Wow, as expected of Han Ga-in! Ga-in is incredibly capable! There's no one in the world as trustworthy as me!”
The “deal” I had supposedly made with the Lord was a little strange, but it wasn't bad.
At least, there was nothing in it that would put me at a disadvantage.
It was a condition I could naturally fulfill while progressing through the remaining room, Room 206.
I had a rough idea of how to finish Room 104, so it was time to get moving.
--- Click!
As I turned off the classroom lights and headed out, a slightly strange thought came to me.
“...”
The handwriting on the Status Window belonged to none other than me.
Naturally, the word choices and handwriting gave me a vague sense of the emotion behind it.
“... What were you so afraid of?”
There was no one anywhere who could answer.
* * *
The next day, my companions began gathering at the Old School Building early in the morning.
After listening to my explanation for a while, A-ri nodded in understanding and summarized it.
“So the Sacred Sun is basically an Ark containing the souls of the believers?”
An Ark. That was an appropriate comparison.
“Right.”
“Believers filled with devoted Faith in the Lord are basically LEGO blocks. Countless blocks have gathered together to form the Sacred Sun.”
“Exactly.”
“The process by which the Inheritance, the Sacred Sun, leaves the Curse Room is the Lord's escape, but it's also the escape of the believers trapped in the purgatory that is this Curse Room.”
Eun-sol nodded as if impressed.
“I almost cried just now.”
“Pardon?”
“Whew... With all the fuss that's been made, I wondered how evil the Lord could possibly be, but it doesn't feel like that kind of being.”
“That doesn't mean the Lord is good. How many people has it killed?”
“That's true, but didn't the Lord at least care about the believers?”
According to the record left on the Status Window by my past self, that was right.
Then Song-i spoke up.
“Originally, our concern in this room wasn't how to resolve it, but that the reward seemed strange, right?”
“Right.”
“Do we not need to worry about that? We were concerned that the Sacred Sun was an Inheritance with a kind of ego, and that it might try to brainwash its owner.”
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
This was apparently something I had agreed on with the Lord through the “deal,” but...
I felt uneasy about telling my companions about that deal.
Not everyone needed to know what I had learned.
For some knowledge, it was enough for only those who needed to know to know it.
“I've already checked. Apparently, there's no need to worry too much about that.”
Once I said that, everyone's expressions brightened.
Eun-sol smiled happily.
“Then let's finish Room 104 right away!”
Jin-cheol chuckled.
“Sis, are you saying we should finish it right away by killing all the followers? They’re already chanting, ‘Saintess! Saintess!’ at Mi-ro.”
Eun-sol looked a little flustered.
“You know that's not what I mean! Why would we do that when we've made a plan to resolve Room 104 without spilling blood?”
The plan itself wasn't anything special.
The condition for resolving Room 104 was the cult’s collapse, but that collapse didn't have to come from beating them to death.
Wouldn't making them believe in a different religion and destroying their Faith be one way to do it?
Interestingly, the other me had asked the Lord about that directly, and the Lord said it seemed possible.
Once every plan to resolve the room was complete, Seung-yeop quietly raised his hand.
“Ga-in, when should we use the Soul Box? Originally, we planned to put Arima, who entered Aurelia's body, into it along with the teacher...”
My companions suspected that Arima had been devoured by Aurelia.
Would it be all right to put Aurelia in the Soul Box?
“I think we should watch the situation for a few more days.”
Jin-cheol immediately nodded.
“I think so too. When that Arima thing entered my body, all I could see for quite a while was this wriggling shape.”
“Really?”
“It took a long time before it came out looking like a person. If Arima is a virus, that means the infection needs time to finish.”
“Everything's clear now, right? Let's keep going!”
* * *
What followed was, in a way, the repetition of tedious, simple work.
Some of my companions continued to fill the Old School Building with terror, while Mi-ro continued strengthening her position within the Cult.
As though he had been waiting for this, Grandfather spread the new doctrine with the power of Crowd Psychology.
About three months passed like that.
Then one day, Aurelia came to see me.
“It's been a long time.”
She looked quite tired.
“There aren't even ten people left in the Cult who could be called true believers.”
“It will not be long before the room is resolved.”
“You are very capable people. The believers have witnessed miracles countless times, so I didn't think it would be easy to make them renounce their faith.”
These were not ordinary cult followers. How could it be easy to make believers who had witnessed countless miracles abandon their faith?
As Aurelia said, it wasn't easy.
“Our side performed a great many miracles too.”
If we used supernatural methods like Crowd Psychology and Mi-ro's Voice, it was possible.
“I see.”
The Saintess wore a somewhat empty expression.
A heavy silence settled over us.
I decided to ask honestly.
“Who are you now? Arima? Aurelia?”
I wasn't naïve enough to assume she would naturally tell me the truth.
Elena was behind me, watching Aurelia with Lie Detection activated.
“...”
“Honestly, it doesn't matter much either way. What matters is whether you'll cooperate with us.”
She had realized the truth of this world.
The god she had believed in all her life was only a Prisoner trapped in the Hotel, while NPCs like herself were beings imprisoned in the purgatory that was the Hotel.
The Soul Box was an escape route that could pull her out into the real world.
Aurelia, who had remained silent, opened her mouth.
“Actually, I originally intended to kill myself.”
“...”
“I felt empty. The world seemed hazy, and my life felt hollow... I just wanted to die and go to Paradise.”
Paradise.
The Sacred Sun.
The afterlife the Lord had prepared for the believers.
“But then, you left me this note.”
“Pardon?”
Me? A note for Aurelia?
There was nothing about this on the Status Window.
As I stood there in confusion, she handed me the note.
A sentence written in unmistakably my handwriting came into view.
「I will show you mercy. Never go to Paradise. Enter the Soul Box and escape this room. This is my final act of conscience, my final shred of humanity.」
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