WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 439: Room 206, Curse Room - The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days Re (4)
──────
- Kim A-ri
The lighting was dim because the electricity barely worked, and the stale, poorly ventilated air carried an unpleasant smell.
Hundreds of people had gathered in this miserable underground cavern.
It was the day of a Demon King Cult assembly.
“Everyone! Today’s teaching concerns ‘equality.’ We are all glorious descendants, and beneath the Great Gaze, each person’s class is nothing more than an illusion...”
As the pastor on the platform boomed on, I sank into complicated thoughts.
On our second attempt at Room 206, we were split into two main groups.
Yoo Song-i, Lee Eun-sol, Cha Jin-cheol, Kim Mook-seong, and Park Seung-yeop.
For convenience, let’s call them the “city domination team.”
Their goal was to use Song-i’s position as the mayor’s daughter to gain real control of the city and obtain the various pieces of information the mayor was hiding.
Han Ga-in and Kim A-ri.
For convenience, Ga-in and I were the “cult leader team.”
Our first goal was to secure enough believers devoted to Ga-in to use the Sacred Sun.
Once we could use the Sacred Sun?
We had several plans after that, but we could think about those when the time came.
Lastly, Kim Sang-hyeon and Elena were the “support team,” moving between both sides.
Sang-hyeon was a Second-Class Citizen and a Secret Agent, so he could move around freely.
He had already infiltrated the underground assembly somewhere, concealing his identity.
Elena couldn’t move as freely as Sang-hyeon because she was a popular actress, but she had plenty of money and a large house, which helped.
That was enough about the others. Let’s focus on Ga-in’s and my role.
How exactly were we supposed to build a cult?
I thought I’d had plenty of bizarre experiences at the Management Bureau that most people wouldn’t have in a lifetime, but this was new even for me.
I’d seen plenty of people worship bizarre Chaos Entities that had crawled out of who knew where, calling them gods. Whenever I found them, I killed them. I’d never tried to build a group like that myself.
Ga-in, my companion who could match anyone when it came to strange ideas, felt the same way.
Fortunately, after discussing it, Ga-in and I came to the same conclusion.
‘This is how the most famous “new religious movement” I know did it.’
‘Hmm... That makes sense.’
It was easier to swallow up something others had painstakingly gathered than build everything from scratch.
As it happened, Room 206 had a perfect, ready-made target.
The Demon King Cult.
--- Clap!
The sound of clapping came from the platform.
“Everyone, please pay attention. Apostle A-ri has remarkable news to share.”
As an apostle of the Cult rumored to perform miracles, I rarely spoke at assemblies. I stepped onto the platform.
Amid the murmuring, everyone’s eyes turned toward me.
“...”
Instead of speaking right away, I spent about a minute meeting their eyes and putting on an air of gravity.
“Everyone, I wish to deliver glorious news today.”
The underground cavern became quiet as a grave.
“At last, the Prophet who has received the Revelation of the true Savior has risen.”
According to their doctrine, the Demon King’s Prophet does not descend from heaven, but rises from underground.
That was because the Demon King was beneath the city, not in heaven.
* * *
The moment the assembly ended, the Cult’s higher-ups swarmed around me.
“Apostle A-ri! How could you suddenly bring up something like this without discussing it first...”
“Discuss it? I simply conveyed the truth that the Prophet has arisen. What is there to discuss?”
“No...! W-we should at least see what kind of person this is!”
“My judgment isn’t enough? Are you saying I deceived you?”
When I faced them with open confidence, the Cult members became flustered instead.
“T-that’s not what we mean! Apostle A-ri was naturally born with spiritual power, of course, but you are still young, so perhaps you were mistaken...”
“Enough. I won’t listen to any more.”
“Apostle A-ri!”
Some thought I had been deceived by a con artist with a convincing appearance.
Others thought I had failed to see through a plot by the mayor.
Every one of the Cult’s higher-ups said I had been fooled. It seemed they couldn’t believe me because, according to Room 206’s setting, I was a teenage girl.
“Stop standing around here. Follow me.”
“What do you mean...”
“Paulo, you said it earlier, didn’t you? That you should see for yourselves what kind of person he is?”
“... I did.”
“Then let’s go see him.”
The room fell silent.
A moment later, someone spoke.
“Where exactly is that bastard?”
“Outside Paradise.”
“O-outside? Don’t tell me you revealed the location of the Door of Truth to him?”
The Door of Truth, a gap in the city leading outside Paradise, was one of the Cult’s secrets.
It was only natural that they would be horrified to hear I had told an outsider about it.
Of course, I remained confident.
“Is there any reason to hide a secret from the Prophet?”
“Apostle A-ri! What in the world...”
“Enough.”
At that moment, a deep voice filled the cavern.
It belonged to Raymond, the elder with the strongest voice in the Cult’s high-ranking council.
“Let’s at least see what kind of person he is. Who knows? Perhaps the Demon King really did send us a Prophet.”
* * *
- Yoo Song-i
The moment I stepped into the garden and breathed in the refreshing, open air, my mind cleared.
It struck me again, but enjoying such a vast garden in Paradise, which was practically a city-state, was an incredible luxury!
It was only possible because my surname was Kadyrov.
Rights always came with heavy responsibilities.
I had begun learning from the mayor what the “responsibility of the Kadyrovs” meant.
The succession had begun.
Leon had informed those around him, and my status felt as though it had changed from princess to heir to the throne.
Thanks to that, a lot of things became easier.
For example, Eun-sol no longer needed to rack her brain just to meet me.
I could just say I’d called for her!
“Song-i, Leon doesn’t know the Demon King’s true nature either?”
We also didn’t need to worry about information leaking while we talked like this.
I had replaced the mayor’s guards with Jin-cheol and Grandpa Mook-seong.
Ha! That was the difference between a princess and an heir!
I didn’t need to ask Leon and explain my reasons in detail. I could just tell him to do it!
“Song-i? Why do you suddenly look so pleased with yourself?”
“Pleased with myself...?”
Eun-sol, wasn’t that too disrespectful for a Second-Class Citizen to say before the heaven-like First-Class mayor’s heir?
...
I should refrain from taking method acting too far.
At this rate, I might actually order the Enforcers to punish her.
“Ahem. Dad, no, Leon said the Demon King came flying in from space like a meteor, already split into several pieces, and fell in various places across Earth.”
“There are a lot of shocking things in those documents. It says humanity itself is what suppresses the Demon King...”
The mayor had told me many secrets.
How could humanity possibly suppress the Demon King curled up in the depths of the planet?
If the Demon King was water, Indomitable Reason was nothing more than the cap of a plastic bottle.
What held the water, in other words, what sealed the Demon King, was not the cap but the bottle itself.
The bottle was humanity in Paradise itself.
The spiritual mass of tens of millions of people packed into a small area suppressed the Demon King, who had been divided into several pieces.
Of course, that didn’t mean Indomitable Reason was unimportant.
Even if the bottle was intact, water would leak if the cap came off.
“What does ‘spiritual mass’ even mean?”
“I don’t know either.”
“Hmm... A-ri or Grandpa might understand. I’ll ask Grandpa when his Punishment is lifted and he comes back.”
“Don’t we only need to understand the conclusion?”
“To suppress the Demon King, tens of millions of people have to live on top of the Demon King’s Fragments scattered across Earth?”
“That’s it.”
Eun-sol let out a long sigh.
“I feel like a lot of the questions I had while looking at Paradise have been answered.”
Why was life in Paradise so harsh?
Because tens of millions of people were being forced to live in an area about the size of a somewhat large city.
You know, the side effects of urbanization and overpopulation.
“According to the documents, Paradise isn’t a naturally formed city.”
“Huh?”
“Natural cities tend to form in efficient locations as they develop, right? Usually near rivers and ports.”
“Like Seoul?”
“The Han River, Incheon. Yes, like Seoul.”
“... There isn’t a river near Paradise.”
“It wasn’t built in an efficient location. A Demon King Fragment happened to fall there, so they forcibly built a city of tens of millions on top of it.”
I didn’t know as much as Eun-sol, but even I could tell that a city forcibly built in an unnatural place would suffer worse side effects.
“There must be cities in even worse conditions than Paradise.”
“There probably are.”
“Look at this map. This is where the Himalayas are, right?”
“...”
“They forced a city of over thirty million people into a place like this too. Those people must have it far worse than Paradise.”
The reason a class system had developed was probably similar.
Just as ships sailing the open sea gave their captains authority like kings, it was a means of maintaining order in a closed environment.
They even ground people down under all kinds of pretexts to provide fuel for Indomitable Reason. It would be stranger if their quality of life was high.
“That’s why the city leadership hides the fact that the outside world is fine.”
“... Because they might escape?”
“They have to stop the lower classes from escaping. No matter how much they suffer, they have to suppress the Demon King in the city until they die.”
Jin-cheol, who had been listening beside us, spoke.
“Damn... Listening to this makes my head feel like it’s going to burst. It’s fascinating and horrifying, but this is basically Room 206’s backstory, right?”
“That’s true.”
“Our goals are still escape first and resolution second.”
“Right.”
“Listening to Song-i, I get why the Hotel scared us by saying Room 206 was fucking, no, insanely difficult.”
“...”
Why was Room 206 harder than the other Curse Rooms?
It wasn’t because the Prisoner was strong.
I didn’t know whether weak Prisoners even existed, but even one of them would be much stronger than us.
To a chick, the difference between a fox and a tiger was meaningless.
“It was because of the Demon King’s nature.”
“...”
I thought about the other Prisoners we had encountered in the Hotel.
The Prisoner in Room 101 was probably the hospital director, but since it never appeared, even by the end, I would skip that one.
The Nebula Dragon or the Unborn One in Room 102 was half-baked.
One was practically a corpse, and the other was an illegitimate child born from that corpse.
The teacher in Room 103 had been an ally from the start.
The Lord in Room 104 was ambiguous, but from the perspective of resolving the room, it had also been an ally.
It was a mad god that copied itself into the Inheritance, which would leave the room after the room was resolved.
The Zero-Dimensional Eye in Room 201 was a mad god, but negotiation through human sacrifice had been possible.
The Sea God in Room 202 had also been someone we could communicate with, and looking back, humanity had been more at fault.
Adravita in Room 203 was not necessarily an outright villain either. Depending on how you saw it, Adravita was like the god of a new world.
The Prisoner in Room 205 was too pitiful to even mention, so I would skip that one.
“... Comparing them one by one, the Demon King in Room 206 really is exhausting.”
It was a monster that would devour all humanity the moment it emerged from underground. It was more hostile to humanity than the Zero-Dimensional Eye and so powerful there was no answer to it.
Still, the Demon King had another, more terrifying aspect.
Eun-sol sighed and muttered, “Sigh... Conversation, negotiation. None of that worked at all?”
“According to Leon.”
“It’s similar to what Ga-in said.”
The records passed down through the Kadyrov Family and Ga-in’s experience contacting the Demon King’s essence through Descent had one thing in common.
It was impossible to communicate with the Demon King.
It was an incomprehensible being, like a collection of endlessly rampaging impulses.
A being that slaughtered humanity when it awakened, possessed absurd power, and could not be reasoned with or negotiated with at all.
We had to “resolve” a monster like that.
“...”
“...”
After a heavy silence, Eun-sol spoke.
“We’ve gathered a lot of information, but one very important piece is missing.”
“What is it?”
“What exactly is the power suppressing the Demon King right now? Tens of millions of humans living atop the Demon King Fragments scattered around the world, right?”
“Yes.”
“Was this city here from the beginning?”
“Huh?”
“A city can’t be built overnight. That means the Demon King Fragment fell first, then after a considerable amount of time passed, humanity built the city.”
“Right?”
“Then how did they suppress the Demon King before they built the city?”
“...”
“And who figured out that concentrated humanity itself could suppress the Demon King?”
Who discovered that they could build cities atop Demon King Fragments?
How had they suppressed the Demon King before building the cities?
“There’s something more. From what I can tell, your Kadyrov Family is a kind of ‘Administrator’ too. Something appointed that Administrator. So...”
Eun-sol, Jin-cheol, and I all thought of the same thing at once.
“The Management Bureau!”
The group that designed this entire arrangement, the group that appointed Administrators like the Kadyrov Family.
There was an organization like the Management Bureau in Room 206 too!
Maybe it still existed somewhere, even now.
Footnotes:
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