WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 457: Room 206, Curse Room - The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days Re (19)
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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 500
Current Location: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 3]
- Han Ga-in
I felt pain.
The life of the man before me was unbearably tragic.
“Ugh... Lord Kadyrov...”
I gripped the old man’s hand tightly as he lay gasping on a damp sickbed.
I could naturally feel his life.
Despite his wrinkled skin, he was only in his early forties.
He had simply aged quickly after working at Paradise’s shoe factory since childhood.
He had never seen the sky, let alone the sea or a lake. He had never tasted even a bite of fresh meat.
Rather than living as a person, he had lived as a cog in a machine until he had worn himself out completely over the course of his life.
When he finally became too frail to work, all Paradise had prepared for him was this old bed.
“...”
It was a life without dreams or hope.
That was why I felt pain too.
“Lord Kadyrov... It is... an honor... to meet you...”
“...”
Just then, the hospital room door opened.
“Ga-in, the photos are done. Let’s go!”
“... Yes.”
As Kadyrov’s heir, I was doing a kind of volunteer work.
Even in the real world, politicians periodically smear soot on their faces and carry coal briquettes around.
The citizens knew it was an obvious performance, and so did I, but politics was a performance by nature.
“Elena contacted me yesterday. She said they were leaving.”
That meant Elena, A-ri, Seung-yeop, and Jin-cheol had set off for Deep Paradise.
“That’s a relief. It does feel like we’ve lost a lot of strength up here, though.”
“It can’t be helped. Securing an escape route is more important than anything.”
She was right, but in practice, half our fighting force had departed.
“Is there still no news from Mister Sang-hyeon?”
“... Mister?”
Eun-sol looked a little flustered, so I explained.
“We’ve been together for quite a while now, but it still feels strange to keep calling him Teacher.”
“... Ask him later. I think Teacher is better than Mister.”
“Still no news?”
After Mister Sang-hyeon entered that strange place known as the Cult’s Sacred Domain, A-ri left for Deep Paradise after finishing what she had to do.
Since everyone from Hotel Party who had originally been in the Demon King Cult had withdrawn, Song-i and Eun-sol sent another agent into the Cult.
“Well... There haven’t been any reports.”
“That’s strange. Raymond, was it? The Cult elder said people usually came out within a week.”
More than two weeks had already passed.
If not for the Status Window, enough time had passed to assume Mister Sang-hyeon had died in there.
“Sang-hyeon is still alive, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then we wait. He’ll come out when the time comes.”
“Hmm...”
Just like the previous run, my role this time felt somewhat ambiguous.
Researching the Demon King Cult, infiltrating Deep Paradise to secure an escape route, taking control of the city.
Those were the things underway this run, and all of them were being handled diligently by my other companions.
I was focusing solely on charging my Inheritance.
No one had ever reproached me over it.
The Sacred Sun had far greater requirements and side effects than other Inheritances, so its power was expected to be immense as well.
For most problems, sufficient power was the answer.
“So, how’s the charging going? There are an unbelievable number of followers this time! Is it already finished?”
Eun-sol gave me a small, expectant smile. I smiled back.
“It’s much faster. The charging will be finished this run. Maybe even now...”
“Now?”
Suddenly, I remembered the faint feeling I had sensed earlier.
An old man who had worn himself out over his entire life.
A life without dreams or hope.
A cog in Paradise.
Sympathy for the man filled my heart, and a pale light rose from my body.
I couldn’t return the time he had lost, but I wanted to at least heal part of his sick body.
So he could spend even his remaining time in peace.
“...”
That was as far as it went.
An incomprehensible force seized the flowing light and tore it apart.
Indomitable Reason.
If it truly possessed reason, it seemed to be warning me that it would permit no more.
“... So flashy powers are still too much.”
I sighed lightly, then noticed Eun-sol’s eyes had gone wide like a rabbit’s.
“W-What did you just do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I tried to, but it failed. Indomitable Reason-”
“S-Still! Light came out of your body! D-Did you force Indomitable Reason back with your power?”
“I tried to force it back and failed.”
Eun-sol wasn’t listening to me at all.
“That’s amazing! Even the Demon King couldn’t budge against Indomitable Reason-”
“...”
This wasn’t something to compare with the Demon King. Because of the Ruler of Time, the Demon King was being suppressed by an Indomitable Reason hundreds or thousands of times stronger than usual, whereas I was not.
If the Demon King stood where I was now, something like Indomitable Reason would be swept aside like a sheet of paper before the Demon King devoured the world.
“The Progenitor would be shocked if she saw that!”
“The Progenitor uses her powers just fine.”
“It turned out she was using a trick.”
“It wasn’t a trick. It was more like Administrator authority over Indomitable Reason.”
The Progenitor’s method wasn’t something we could imitate.
Still, it was true that I had half succeeded in performing a miracle within Indomitable Reason’s range.
Following that mysterious speech the other day, this was the second time.
“...”
What if the charging was completely finished?
My heart began to race, just like Eun-sol’s.
Then she tilted her head.
“But what were you trying to do?”
I explained simply.
How painful the life of the man I had met during the volunteer work had been, and what I had felt for him.
Eun-sol looked even more shocked than she had when I used my supernatural power.
“Wow...”
“Eun-sol?”
“You, you...”
“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
“I never thought I’d hear something like that from you, Ga-in. I would’ve expected it from me or Jin-cheol, not you.”
“...”
“Wasn’t your usual style, ‘You, little and insignificant one. Human lives are like feathers, and the value of your pain is no more than the dirt stuck to a feather’?”
“What kind of way of speaking is that?”
“The kind you like. Honestly, it’s pretty similar, isn’t it?”
Without realizing it, I covered my burning face.
“Ahem! Stop teasing me.”
“It’s not bad. It might be okay.”
“... What do I look like to you right now?”
“Let’s see... You seem more at ease than before. Your Sponsor told you to pour ‘white paint’ over yourself, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I think I understand what that meant. I think it’s okay.”
“Okay...”
The Grimoire and the Sacred Sun clearly worked in fundamentally different ways.
The former felt like, ‘Your body is my tool,’ while the latter felt like, ‘You are me.’
If someone asked what that meant, I’d say the latter took a person more seriously than the former.
That didn’t mean taking something seriously was always a good thing.
I always took beef seriously.
Eun-sol had probably thought either A-ri or I was too cold-hearted.
From that perspective, it was only natural that she would be happy about the change in me after I sympathized with a suffering NPC.
She didn’t know what I had done in the previous run after being consumed by the Sacred Sun.
Remembering that brought another strange thought to mind.
“My blessing is always protecting me.”
“What?”
If the Status Window, my Blessing of Wisdom, disappeared, it would be difficult to control the Sacred Sun’s extreme influence.
Turn that around, and as long as I had the Status Window, it meant I could control it to some extent, even if not completely.
Like now, when my companions might see me as more human than before.
“...”
A-ri had told me something a long time ago.
There was more than one way to escape Hotel Pioneer, and depending on the method, one could lose their blessing or Inheritance.
That information had proven true when we temporarily went outside through the event A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
At the time, I had nearly lost the Blessing of Wisdom.
...
For me now, an escape that made my blessing disappear was dangerous.
It meant I had become more dependent on the Status Window.
“Ah...”
“What’s wrong?”
It had been the Owl who suggested I gain a new Inheritance after I realized the Grimoire’s side effects.
As a result of following his advice, I had no choice but to become even more dependent on the Owl.
Could the Owl really not have known this future?
“There’s not a single person in this world worth trusting.”
“Hasn’t that always been the case? You’re acting like it ever wasn’t.”
“Haha! Eun-sol, thank you for saying that.”
“Out of nowhere?”
For the first time in a while, I felt that Eun-sol was an adult.
That was right.
There had never been anyone in this world worth trusting.
“I have a small goal now.”
“What is it?”
“I need one more way to protect my mind.”
* * *
- Kim Sang-hyeon
--- Rumble, rumble, rumble...!
Feeling vibrations shake the ground, I climbed up a tree. A moment later, a house-sized boar appeared, snorting heavily.
On the monster’s back sat an adorable boy I knew far too well.
“Where are you! C-Come out!”
It was Park Seung-yeop, using Ominous Imagination.
An impossible being, and naturally a fake.
“Hup!”
I endured even the urge to breathe as I waited and waited.
At last, when the boar lumbered close to the tree-
--- Whoosh!
“Argh-!”
It took less than a second for my hand to snap fake Seung-yeop’s neck.
Soon afterward, the boar also vanished into dust.
“Whew... Is that another one? This truly isn’t easy.”
How many days had passed outside?
Time often flowed strangely in Room 206, and in this bizarre place created by the Demon King, it was difficult to judge the passage of time.
It felt like more than ten days had passed.
“Demon King, I’m angry now, so I’ll drop the politeness. You bastard! Why did you make a place this fucking stupid?”
The first place I arrived in had been a decaying city full of zombies.
That place was full of other versions of me who had gained a strange blessing instead of Diligence, and those bastards had rushed at me to kill me under the Demon King’s orders.
After killing around four of them, I naturally found a strange door.
... Beyond that door was another Curse Room.
A hotel inside a hotel.
A Curse Room inside a Curse Room inside a Curse Room inside a-
“What the hell is this? Where did you pick up the term fractal structure?”
The next room was a rural village battered by a snowstorm, and this time a fake Cha Jin-cheol attacked me.
His physical ability alone put him on the level of an athlete, so I nearly died.
After that came a building with no entrance and a fake Eun-sol.
Sorry, but because Eun-sol was weak in combat, that room was much easier than the previous one.
...
There was no end to it.
The Cult elder had clearly told me it would take one week, yet that much time had long since passed.
“W-Where are you! Come out!”
As I strangled another fake Seung-yeop, the boy whimpered.
“Mom...! A-ri! Ga-in!”
“...”
--- Crunch!
These fakes had memories similar to ours as well.
That fact caused me quite a lot of pain.
“Please, Demon King. I’ll speak politely again, so please come out. Why are you doing this perverted nonsense?”
I kept saying I didn’t know, but inwardly, I felt differently.
I didn’t know exactly when it began, but at some point, I had started to sense it faintly.
I, Kim Sang-hyeon, was drawing closer to the Demon King every moment.
My weak mind was being sucked into an empty world, into a distant abyss.
“...”
For some time now, whenever I closed my eyes, I felt the Demon King.
I saw an endless gathering of boundless impulses, writhing without end.
I felt those impulses slowly reaching their fingertips toward me.
“Are you sculpting me? Are you trying to make me into something you want?”
Once again, a door to the next room appeared.
As if possessed, I opened it and headed to the next place.
It was an enormous room.
Dark crimson walls surrounded me on all sides, and there was no passage leading elsewhere.
Even the door I had just entered through disappeared like an illusion.
At the center of the room stood the young man I revered most.
“Mister, good work!”
“... Mister?”
His very first words displeased me.
Footnotes:
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