WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 450: Room 206, Curse Room - The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days Re (15)
──────
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 479
Current Location: Level 1, Room 105 - Rest Room
Sage’s Advice: 0]
- Han Ga-in
--- Sizzle!
Just hearing that sound made me happy.
“Good work, everyone! We even got a rest day, so let's eat well and relax today!”
It felt like we were having some kind of company dinner. Were we, actually?
“Hey! Grandpa, you're not supposed to put pork and beef on the grill together!”
“You brat! Meat is meat, what's the difference? You're picky about the strangest things. Just like a wild boar!”
Watching Jin-cheol and Grandpa Mook-seong trade insults like friends, as they always did, made me smile.
A thick slice of pork belly topped with salted shrimp, a little seasoned scallion salad, and pickled wild garlic, all wrapped in soft lettuce.
Next came the beef.
A two-finger-thick piece of tenderloin, sprinkled with a few grains of coarse salt and lightly dipped in wasabi.
Ah...!
Wasn't this exact moment why humanity developed civilization?
Humanity wasn't great because of skyscrapers or nuclear weapons!
It was all for putting a piece of pork or beef in our mouths-
“Should we invite Yumi too?”
“No. We're relaxing comfortably by ourselves.”
“Uh! Still, she might feel left out if we're the only ones eating meat like this...”
“She won't know if you don't say anything, Seung-yeop.”
“...”
Even in the middle of that, I heard something funny from beside me.
“Pfft, ahaha! A-ri, isn't that too harsh?”
“No?”
A-ri thought that, if necessary, she could put a different being into the Soul Box. She believed that was the only way to fully use the Inheritance's potential.
That was why she was wary of getting too close to Yumi, who could be replaced whenever necessary.
So A-ri wasn't being mean to Yumi. She just thought of her as a replaceable part.
Wasn't that even worse?
Eun-sol chuckled and joined in.
“I understand what you're thinking, A-ri, but wouldn't that be pointless?”
“...”
Seung-yeop wasn't A-ri.
As far as I could tell, there was no chance Seung-yeop would replace the being inside the Soul Box.
...
That was how it felt.
Pork belly and tenderloin steak, a little beer, and conversations with companions who made me laugh.
The twisted feelings that had boiled with disgust and revulsion gradually settled down.
When I realized that, a hollow laugh escaped me.
“Ha!”
A-ri reacted.
“What's wrong?”
“... I think I was caught up in some very serious worries, but I forgot all about them while eating pork belly and beef. Isn't that too animalistic?”
“That's how it is.”
“That's how it is? Are Management Bureau people like that too?”
A-ri shrugged.
“Of course. Even if a giant frog ate forty people three days ago, you still need to ease your mind over beef today.”
“I thought Management Bureau people dealt with things by injecting strange drugs like Tuo Decima Atileo.”
“Tuo what? Is there a drug like that?”
“I just made it up.”
“... If they injected drugs every time, there'd be more drugs than blood in their veins.”
Suddenly, I thought this incident had been closer to an accident, just as Doctor said.
Once I lost the Status Window's protection, I couldn't control the Inheritance and was swept along by it.
Come to think of it, it wasn't a problem unique to the Sacred Sun.
The Grimoire couldn't be used normally without the Status Window either. Hadn't I learned that painfully in Room 203?
Of course, now that I'd experienced the danger held by the Sacred Sun firsthand, I needed to make sure nothing similar happened again.
Which meant-
“Um, Doctor.”
“Elena? Did you want to say something?”
“Did something strange happen to me in the room? Earlier, Mr. Ga-in was looking at me while trembling.”
“... Ah! This sirloin is grilled just right. Have a piece.”
My unnecessarily sharp senses caught Elena whispering to Doctor.
I'd vaguely brushed it off for everyone else, but I should have a serious talk with Elena sometime.
Near the end of the meal, Eun-sol spoke.
“As you know, tomorrow is the rest day the Hotel gave us. We can make plans tomorrow. Ga-in will be able to use Sage’s Advice then anyway, and we're tired today...”
As she spoke, she glanced at me.
Normally, we probably would have talked a little longer before going to sleep, but she seemed to think we should rest because she was worried about how I'd reacted earlier.
Then A-ri cut in.
“Let's just talk about a few things we're curious about or that come to mind. We can make serious plans tomorrow.”
“That much is fine...”
Things we were curious about?
It sounded as though A-ri herself had a question.
Sure enough, as Eun-sol moved toward the whiteboard set up in one corner of Room 105, A-ri called out loudly.
“First question!”
“Go ahead.”
“Ga-in!”
There was a question for me?
If she was going to ask why I'd thrown up earlier, that would be a little awkward to say publicly-
“How did you find me earlier?”
It was a different question.
“Deep Paradise lacks light and has a fairly large underground city, so it's difficult to navigate. On top of that, absurd monsters pop out everywhere once a minute. The biggest problem is that time flows differently from the surface.”
Everyone nodded.
We'd already shared that much basic information.
“Did you find my location through the Status Window? Did it say something like seven kilometers northwest, like it did in Room 203? Did you locate me that way, then fly over using the Sacred Sun?”
I was impressed by A-ri's theory.
“Wow! I could've found you that way.”
“Huh?”
“That's not the method I used, though.”
What would Companion Location Information look like in Deep Paradise?
I didn't know.
I was so pressed for time that every second counted. I couldn't even undo Mi-ro's Sealing.
There was no way I could've touched the Status Window with so little time.
My companions looked at me with question marks on their faces.
“Then how did you find her?”
I took out a painting and showed it to everyone.
“Ta-da!”
“Isn't that the painting you got before?”
Exactly.
Kingdom of Dreams, the painting the Painter gave me as a reward for A Family with Deep Roots!
Yesterday, I discovered an incredible secret hidden in this amazing painting.
“I'll explain. It's a little long, so listen carefully-”
Eun-sol stopped me.
“This is already interesting, but let's gather the questions first. It'll make the discussion easier. Does anyone else have something they're curious about?”
Doctor asked the next question.
“As you know, my identity in Room 206 was a Secret Agent who had infiltrated the Demon King Cult. Watching the Cult for so long left me with a question. Aren't you curious about their relationship with the Demon King?”
Eun-sol tilted her head.
“Could you be more specific?”
“According to the Order of Reason's analysis, the Demon King is an entity incapable of normal communication. Ga-in, who has fought it once, seems to think the same. Rather than a god with a personality, it is more like a cosmic natural disaster.”
I thought the same.
“The Cult worships such a natural-disaster-like being and has even received supernatural powers from it.”
“That is strange. Let's talk about that. Next?”
This time, it was Song-i.
“At the end, I hid in the shelter the Progenitor built and escaped.”
“I heard.”
“But the Kadyrov Family knew nothing about that shelter or its related facilities.”
“Oh! Did the Progenitor build it while hiding it even from the Kadyrov Family?”
“I think the Progenitor might have more hidden strength.”
“That could be.”
It sounded plausible.
The Order of Reason in Deep Paradise treated the Progenitor like an insignificant mid-level officer, but there was a time gap to consider.
While the Director distorted time in Deep Paradise, the Progenitor spent nearly 120 years in Paradise.
It would be stranger if the Progenitor had built up nothing over all that time.
After a brief silence, Mi-ro raised her hand last.
“Me! Me! Think about it, everyone! Why was I Sealed?”
I checked the list of questions for a moment.
1. How I found A-ri in Deep Paradise.
2. The relationship between the Demon King Cult and the Demon King.
3. The Progenitor's hidden strength.
4. Why Mi-ro was Sealed.
Why Mi-ro was Sealed?
I thought the answer was obvious.
“Wasn't it because Time Lender is broken?”
Everyone nodded at A-ri's words.
Honestly, hadn't we all thought about it at least once?
Time Lender's greatest weakness was that there was no way to directly control a Summoned Entity, but our party's greatest strength was the trust between us.
In other words, no matter who Mi-ro summoned from among us, the Summoned Entity would never attack Mi-ro.
Now that Time Lender's greatest weakness had disappeared, only its absurd power remained.
To put it bluntly, no matter how powerful another Inheritance was, it would be difficult for it to surpass Time Lender.
Time Lender could simply summon that Inheritance.
Besides, though it would never happen, even if we ended up fighting among ourselves, Time Lender would be the strongest.
The moment a Summoned Entity appeared, Mi-ro could shoot them dead with a gun and win immediately.
The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it was.
“Huh? Huh? No, I was thinking of a different reason, though-y...”
Mi-ro's distinctive little “-y” ending was strangely adorable.
Still, A-ri tilted her head at the thought that there might be another reason.
“What is it?”
“A-ri, you woke me up earlier, right? You couldn't undo the Sealing, though.”
“That's right.”
“While you were looking through the Director's memories alone, I looked outside too.”
“I remember.”
“So you gave me a ki, kiss-”
“... Skip that part.”
Why skip it?
That was an extremely interesting part.
Everyone's eyes were already wide with shock.
“Something felt strange while I was sensing the outside. Everything felt incredibly... unimaginably slow.”
?
“The soldiers' movements, Robert's actions, Ga-in's actions. Everything felt as slow as turtles. When I realized that and came back, A-ri was slow too-”
Th-this couldn't be-
“Waaait!”
A-ri stopped Mi-ro in shock and began babbling frantically.
“Everything was slow? Wh-what state is Deep Paradise in? It's a place where time has slowed down enormously! Even if decades pass in the outside world, where time flows normally, only a few days pass in Deep Paradise-”
From the outside world, where time flowed normally, changes in Deep Paradise were extremely slow.
At some point, everything in Deep Paradise had begun to feel slow to Mi-ro.
In other words.
“Whoa! Could Immutable Blessing be resisting changes in time? Like, in a place where time has slowed down, she alone can think and move at a normal speed?”
Along with my stunned companions, I was genuinely impressed.
Soon, A-ri laughed as though she couldn't believe it.
“Woooow! My mom is amazing!”
“R-really-y?”
“Her Inheritance was already broken, and now her blessing is like a cheat code! She really seems like the protagonist!”
Grandpa sounded dumbfounded even in the middle of it.
“Are these Hotel bastards discriminating between people? Should we go on strike or something?”
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
