WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 420: Room 104, Curse Room - ‘Hotel High, the Prestigious Academy’ Re (19) (Final)
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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 374
Current Location: Level 1, Room 104 - Curse Room ‘Hotel High, the Prestigious Academy’
Sage’s Advice: X]
- Han Ga-in
I got to my feet, belatedly composing myself.
“We all have a lot to talk about, so I’ll make some coffee. What would you like?”
“Huh? Ah, an iced Americano.”
I used the coffee as an excuse to think for a moment.
My past self had sent Aurelia a note telling her not to go to Paradise, then hidden that fact from me.
Why?
My first thought was that he wanted to stop Aurelia from killing herself.
If she committed suicide, she was a follower of the Lord, so there was a good chance her very soul would be captured by the Sacred Sun.
What would happen to Arima then?
Arima was essentially a soulless mental parasite, and she was currently consuming Aurelia.
If Aurelia were sucked into the Sacred Sun, Arima would disappear with her.
Had he warned her not to kill herself to prevent that?
It seemed like a reasonable hypothesis at first glance, but it had a major flaw.
If that was the reason, there was no need to hide from me that he’d sent Aurelia a note.
Maybe he hadn’t had time?
He didn’t need to write much. Even just a few words, something like ‘Saintess, no suicide, note,’ would’ve let me roughly figure it out.
Then an entirely different possibility came to mind.
The words my past self had written in the Status Window had been thick with an emotion called fear.
I felt something similar in the note’s wording.
「This is my final act of conscience, my final shred of humanity.」
Those weren’t words I would normally use.
It meant I’d been emotionally shaken when I wrote the note.
Focusing on that, I tried thinking about it simply.
Why had I given Aurelia the note?
She was a potential candidate for the Soul Box, which meant she was also a potential companion.
So I’d told her not to go to Paradise out of literal mercy.
Why had I hidden it from myself?
Because I didn’t want my future self to know why Aurelia mustn’t go to Paradise.
Once my thoughts reached that point, one of Room 104’s core characteristics naturally came to mind: secrecy.
The Cult’s members were risking their lives to hide their true nature from the Management Bureau.
Apollion hid because he could be exterminated if the Management Bureau discovered him, but the Lord wasn’t a weak being.
What if he openly built a kingdom like the fish people in Room 202?
As long as he didn’t do something excessive like conquer the world, there was a decent chance the Management Bureau would turn a blind eye.
An answer that simply explained all these questions came to mind.
If the Lord’s purpose in creating the Cult was utterly evil,
If it was something the Management Bureau could never tolerate should they discover it,
Then the true nature of Paradise was-
--- Tap!
“Here’s your iced Americano.”
“Okay.”
I stopped thinking.
Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because too many thoughts had come to mind.
It was better to stop thinking about things I couldn’t handle.
I’d come back intending to obtain the Sacred Sun, and of course, I intended to use it once I had it.
I returned to more practical thoughts, to Aurelia right in front of me.
For the past few months, Aurelia hadn’t cared whether we roasted or boiled the Cult.
That meant she no longer cared about what happened inside the Curse Room.
Her heart was already set on the outside, and Aurelia was already halfway to becoming a companion.
There was no need to shake Aurelia’s resolve by going on about Paradise.
“Will you give me the note?”
“Huh? Ah, yes.”
--- Riiip!
The moment I received it, I tore it up.
“Ah? S-suddenly-”
“You don’t need to worry about it.”
“What?”
“I gave you this because I was afraid you might suddenly kill yourself.”
“...”
I looked directly into her eyes.
“You aren’t planning to kill yourself, are you?”
“...”
It had already been three months since we cooked the Cult.
If Aurelia were the type to commit suicide, she would’ve died ten times over already.
Think about what happened during the second attempt.
A god openly punched a hole through her neck, and she still gritted her teeth and ran away. That was Aurelia.
Han Ga-in: Already halfway persuaded.
A little later, several companions who had been watching the situation outside came in.
* * *
“I’m telling you, Jin-cheol is so tactless!”
“You too, going on about pointless things-”
“Um, my name is Seung-yeop-”
The atmosphere was almost excessively lively.
Each of my companions was doing their best to persuade Aurelia, or Arima.
It would be difficult to find anyone more capable than her among the beings we could put in the Soul Box, so we had to somehow help her fit in with us.
From the looks of it, things seemed to be going fairly well.
Aurelia, who had been silently drinking coffee for quite some time, had naturally started joining the conversation.
The villains who devoured the Cult by putting forward a fake Saintess, and the real Saintess.
At a glance, they were people who could never become close.
But if they accepted what happened inside the Curse Room as a kind of movie, they could get along well enough.
Even if a protagonist and villain fought as though they wanted to kill each other in a movie, the actors outside the movie could be best friends.
That was why my companions began trying to persuade Aurelia.
“Once you get outside, you won’t have to live trapped in a tiny school like this anymore! The Management Bureau will see you as a valuable talent too.”
Eun-sol stressed that life outside would be better than life in Room 104.
“I won’t be able to leave the Soul Box.... I won’t be able to leave this boy’s side either.”
“Sis! If there’s somewhere you want to go, just tell me!”
“This boy is an idiot, so you can order him around however you want. Think of it as getting yourself a servant.”
“... A-ri?”
Seung-yeop and A-ri reassured the uneasy Aurelia.
“Don’t worry about the cultists. Hardly anyone died.”
“If Room 104 disappears, won’t they all disappear?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“If they don’t disappear, isn’t that a problem in its own way...?”
“There must be a way somewhere on the third floor to grant the people of Room 104 rest.”
“...”
“Let’s find it together.”
The teacher comforted Aurelia in their own way over having to part from the cultists.
A little later, the Saintess looked at Seung-yeop.
“If I leave after being put in the Soul Box, I’ll become something like a ghost. Right?”
Seung-yeop obediently nodded.
“Yes.”
Jin-cheol looked flustered.
“Huh? She’ll become a ghost? Then what was Arima talking about before?”
Curious, I asked.
“What did Arima say to you?”
“She said Aurelia’s body was beau- ahem, that its performance was extremely good. So she wanted to obtain that body.”
Come to think of it, it was strange.
Would the beauty or talent of a body she couldn’t take with her even matter?
Then Aurelia looked at Seung-yeop and explained.
“The Phantom Demon still had a perfectly fine body even while their soul was stored in the Soul Box.”
“Wasn’t that the power of Soul-Shifting Demon Art, not the Soul Box?”
“Arima doesn’t have Soul-Shifting Demon Art, but she does have magic.”
Arima’s magic.
Old, nightmarish memories came to mind.
The traces of cruel human experiments that filled the haunted house, the sight of someone transforming into a monster as large as a house.
A Witch had the power to knead a human body like clay.
“Your name was Kim A-ri, right?”
“Yeah. You’ve finally memorized all our names.”
“Lend me your thermos.”
“Huh?”
A-ri nervously took the thermos from inside her clothing.
“Things put inside that bottle can move in and out of the room, right?”
“If they fall under the category of ‘ingredients.’”
By the Hotel’s standards, even human bodies were ingredients, which was why A-ri stored blood in that bottle and used it like spare batteries.
“I’ll borrow it. Just this once will be enough.”
“Huh? Huh?”
The moment the Saintess unhesitatingly poured A-ri’s blood out of the thermos, A-ri looked as though she’d just realized something.
Soon, light seemed to pour from the Saintess’s hand, and then she suddenly cut off her own finger without hesitation!
“Argh!”
“It’s okay.”
“G-grab her! She’s really trying to kill herself-”
“It isn’t suicide.”
“Ga-in! Take control of her body-”
“I said it isn’t suicide!”
After stressing three times that it was nothing, the Saintess began putting hair, a large amount of blood, her finger, and pieces of flesh into the thermos.
Mi-ro asked with interest.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking my body outside Room 104.”
After that, she continued using incomprehensible, bizarre sorcery to pack the thermos full.
Watching the grotesque sight, A-ri sighed.
“Ah.... That’s the bottle I use!”
Without so much as twitching a nostril hair, the Witch continued her bloody work.
A little later, the being that might have been Aurelia or Arima looked at me.
“Han Ga-in.”
“Hmm?”
“You asked me earlier, didn’t you? Whether I’m Arima or Aurelia right now?”
The moment she said that, the surroundings fell quiet.
It was an issue everyone cared deeply about.
Until recently, we’d thought she was Aurelia, but what she’d just done was far too Witch-like.
“The question itself seems stupid to me. Does gray belong to black or white?”
Did that mean they were already mixed together beyond distinction?
When Arima seeped into Jin-cheol’s body, she had seemed like a separate personality. Apparently, that wasn’t the case now.
“Gray? Fine. What matters is whether we can cooperate, not the color-”
“If I had to say.”
“...”
“Right now, I think I’m closer to Aurelia. After we leave, I’ll be closer to Arima.”
“I understand.”
“It’s a complicated matter even for me, so don’t ask me any more.”
Seung-yeop asked with a cautious expression.
“Then what should we call you now? Arimarelia? Aurelrima? Ah, or!”
“Or?”
“How about Irelia-”
“That’s enough. Rather than something like that....”
The Saintess fell silent for a moment, then spoke again.
“I don’t want to remember my old name again. I want to make an entirely new one. From now on, call me Yumi. Yumi.”
“... That sounds like a cat’s name.”
“What?”
With that, Yumi asked Seung-yeop to put her in the Soul Box.
And that was the turning point.
--- Rumble!
The coffee we had been drinking, the chairs we had been sitting on, the concrete building, the people walking around us.
All of it collapsed and returned to light like grains of sand swept away by a wave.
It’s resolved!
In the empty space where the laws of physics vanished in an instant, our bodies began to float.
All the companions drifting weightlessly broke into bright smiles.
Before long, the entire world shook, and our bodies began shooting into the sky.
And then-
The Lord appeared.
...
...
...
A shining touch pulled at my soul.
I passed through distant worlds, endless space and time, and a boundless horizon again and again.
...
I heard a voice.
「At last, the time has come.」
My corneas ruptured, and clear fluid streamed down.
Pain as though my head would split apart tore through my mind.
This being was likely the true Lord.
Not some avatar contained in the Sacred Sun, but a genuine transcendent being.
“Today will be the last time I hear your voice too.”
「My child, what sorrowful words. Our relationship is only beginning, so why do you speak of its end?」
When the final moment came, there was something I had wanted to ask at least once.
Did he truly consider the avatar contained in the Sacred Sun to be himself?
Maybe the main body had no way of leaving the Curse Room, so he was engaging in self-serving rationalization.
“...”
When the moment actually came, I couldn’t open my mouth.
Was it because I was crushed beneath the overwhelming majesty of something like a living sun?
「Remember our transaction. I have bestowed much upon you.... You too must keep your promise.」
“That matter has already been settled.”
I saw the Lord.
No, since my corneas had ruptured, the word ‘saw’ wasn’t appropriate.
I sensed the Lord.
My senses, sharper than ever before, or perhaps a sixth sense, whispered incomprehensible words to me.
I wanted to confirm it.
Whether the strangest piece of information my past self had written in the Status Window was true!
I sensed dots.
I perceived the presence of a vast pointillist image formed from countless dots.
A million, ten million, a hundred million, a trillion... No, calculations like that were meaningless. There were endlessly many dots!
...
「Have you satisfied your cursed curiosity?」
“...”
As my consciousness faded, I realized.
The Sacred Sun was an Ark.
An Ark for the Lord and his followers to escape from the purgatory known as the Curse Room.
The Sacred Sun was also the Lord’s avatar, a miniature version of the Lord.
Put differently, if the Sacred Sun were expanded, it would become the Lord.
So....
The Lord himself was also an Ark.
「You have succeeded!
A school determined to kill its students, the conspiracy of a shadowy group whose identity could not be known!
Who could have guessed that all of it was the scheme of a mad god trying to escape from prison?
Still, it took quite a long time, didn’t it?
Even we didn’t expect Room 104’s problem to hold you back this much!
We understand that you had an idea how to resolve it, yet hesitated because of the suspicious reward.
Of course, you could say the issue of the reward only begins now!
It doesn’t matter!
Room 104 ends here!
The issue related to the Inheritance, the contract you made with the mad god.
Those are matters for the future, aren’t they?
Congratulations!
.
.
.
A Final Resolver has emerged among your companions! Congratulations! Since a Final Resolver has emerged, all members return safely.」
Footnotes:
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