WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 468: Room 206, Curse Room - The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days Re (27)
──────
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 555
Current Location: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 1]
- Han Ga-in
“... I'd rather be fighting.”
Was it because I was worn out from the endless forced march?
Ominous words slipped from my mouth.
“...”
The entire space was pink.
It resembled an unfurnished office, except it stretched on forever.
The floor was covered in carpet with a subtly unpleasant texture, while fluorescent lights overhead buzzed without pause.
At a glance, it looked like an ordinary city office. Yet this place had one horrifying trait.
It was vast.
Endlessly vast.
Infinitely vast.
When I searched the space and opened a door, another office appeared. When I searched that office and opened a door, yet another office appeared.
“...”
I'd expected a fierce battle against a copy armed with an immense Inheritance and blessing.
That wasn't the case.
There wasn't even a fight. I couldn't so much as locate the enemy.
--- Whoosh!
I summoned the Sacred Sun again and used its transcendent perception to survey my surroundings.
“Nothing this time either.”
The overwhelming supersense, impossible to classify as sight or hearing, poured data gathered from the surrounding space into my brain. Still, there was no meaningful information.
This wasn't even the first time I'd summoned the sun to search the area.
I had already learned one strange fact.
“It seems like it creates the space every time?”
At first, it seemed as if I had been dropped somewhere within an infinitely vast space. The supersense provided by the Sacred Sun told me something entirely different.
At this moment, the only space that truly existed was the place where I stood.
Opening a door didn't connect it to another office that had already existed.
A space that hadn't existed before appeared beyond the door.
...
Realizing that didn't change anything.
“What the hell am I supposed to do... Stop talking to yourself.”
The strange habit of talking to myself, which I'd developed because of the Grimoire, only made me feel worse.
--- Click!
When I opened the door again, the familiar office greeted me.
“This isn't it.”
In the end, I used my last remaining piece of advice.
[Advice: 1 -> 0]
‘How do I get out of this situation?’
[When you play on the board your opponent has prepared, victory is bound to be far away.]
“... The board my opponent prepared.”
As always, it was an answer that sounded like a Zen riddle.
They said even a dog at a village school could recite poetry after three years. After seeing enough of these vague sentences, an idea came to me.
I couldn't get caught up in the bizarre phenomenon before my eyes.
This place had been created by a copy using an Inheritance and a blessing. Fundamentally, it was only one part of the Demon King's trial.
What was the opponent's goal?
To avoid fighting and drain my resources.
The Demon King was a being made up of beasts, disasters, and impulses.
Still, the Demon King that had mimicked a god in response to the Cult's Faith possessed something resembling intelligence, enough to communicate with its followers.
To the god-mimicking Demon King, I was far too strong right now.
Unless the Demon King itself stepped in, half-baked copies couldn't hold out against me for even a minute.
Rather than compete through strength, it had chosen to lock me in a maze like this.
“...”
I could even guess who the imitation Adversary was and what ability it had used.
As far as I knew, there was only one Inheritance capable of creating such a bizarre phenomenon, ‘Ominous Imagination.’
Even another Inheritance like the Sacred Sun couldn't create something this ridiculous.
The user had to be A-ri's copy.
Was it recreating one of the horrifying phenomena A-ri had experienced while working as an agent?
I understood that much...
So what was the solution?
“...”
For the first time, it felt like I had entered a real Curse Room.
The contests I'd had with ‘Luck, Bracelet Sang-hyeon’ and ‘Justice, Star Fragment Mi-ro’ had been memorable too, but they had fundamentally been nothing but fights.
A true Curse Room made by the Hotel wasn't like that.
Fighting and contests of strength didn't make up as much of it as one might think.
I stood before the door again.
Opening it would only reveal another office.
This time, I changed my approach.
--- Whoosh!
After summoning the sun, I punched the wall instead of opening the door.
Soft flesh made of protein collided with hard concrete, yet the concrete wall burst apart in an instant.
For the first time, something changed in this strange place.
“... What's this place?”
Water came up to my ankles. Green plants filled every direction, and a blue swimming pool lay beyond the broken wall.
It was completely different from the place I'd been in until now.
Open a door, and there was an office. Break a wall, and there was a pool?
“Does it change depending on how I move?”
Would breaking the ceiling lead somewhere else? What about the floor?
If I experimented with different ways of moving like this, would I find a way to reach where A-ri was?
It was like solving a puzzle or an escape room.
--- Splash!
After walking across the rippling water, I concluded that this direction wasn't right either.
I returned to my original thought.
Why had the Demon King given me such an exhausting trial in the first place?
The copies couldn't stop me with force, so it was trying to stall me by trapping me in a maze.
This wasn't a matter of solving the puzzle and finding an answer.
Wasting time solving puzzles was itself the Demon King's intention.
I needed to find another way.
A direction the Demon King hadn't prepared.
Something prepared without any relation to the Demon King.
A power granted by the Hotel.
--- Flutter!
‘Kingdom of Dreams.’
There was no clock, but the date on my Status Window hadn't changed yet, so not even a day had passed.
Considering I'd entered at dawn, it was probably evening by now.
“... Please let at least one person be asleep.”
It felt like a cheap trick, which was exactly why I liked it.
* * *
[User: The Greatest Genius in History
Date: What does it matter?
Current Location: Some fucking weird place
Sage’s Advice: <--- This thing doesn't seem that helpful]
A chaotic world bubbling like foam.
The dream world created by my companions.
Luckily, amid that chaotic dream world, I found the companion I wanted.
This time, she was walking along the beach at a shabby harbor.
“A-ri!”
“...”
“Don't pull out your gun, don't hit me, just listen to what I have to-”
“I understand the situation, so stop talking nonsense.”
“You caught on right away this time?”
The previous dream had taken place at a school, and I'd had to get shot three times before she caught on.
Was it because that had been the first time, and this wasn't?
“Yeah. What brings you here all of a sudden after entering the Sacred Domain?”
I slowly explained the situation to A-ri.
“Hmm. So a copy of me using Ominous Imagination is the culprit?”
“That's right.”
“It recreated the Far Room...”
The Far Room?
As expected, A-ri knew what that place was!
“Damn it! So you were the problem after all, A-ri.”
“...”
“Fine, what's the solution?”
If she knew what kind of place it was, she had to know the solution too, right?
“...”
“What is it?”
“I don't know.”
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
“Don't look at me like that. The Management Bureau doesn't have answers to every problem in reality.”
“Isn't it something you've experienced?”
“I have.”
“Th-then you must've escaped. How did you-”
“... I used a one-time escape method. It was an Escape Tool the Management Bureau didn't have many of, and only I could use it.”
“It doesn't sound like you went in alone. What about the others?”
A-ri's expression darkened at once, so I didn't need to hear the answer.
In the end, even the Management Bureau had never discovered a way to escape the Far Room.
A-ri alone had escaped using a special one-time Escape Tool.
“This is troubling. What did the advice say? Don't play on the enemy's board?”
“That's right.”
Apparently, she really was flustered. A-ri began throwing out every piece of information she knew.
“It may look like many rooms are connected, but there is actually only one, and-”
“Every time you open a door, a new room is created. Once you move into that room, the previous room disappears.”
“Uh, huh? You already know that?”
“Keep going.”
“The previous room doesn't always disappear. More precisely, it seems that only rooms without people disappear. Also, you can create several rooms at once-”
Several rooms at once.
“That part!”
“Huh?”
“How do you create several rooms at once?”
“Y-you probably moved after opening a door, but-”
“I tried breaking a wall too.”
“Then you've figured it out. When you open a door, you can see the room on the other side, right? Don't cross over. Stay in the original room and break the wall. Then another room appears beyond the wall. Don't cross into that one either, and-”
“Okay. I understand.”
Basically, rooms disappeared as long as no one was in them. But if I opened a door, then broke walls or ceilings without crossing into another room, I could create multiple rooms at once.
So...
“I've got it.”
I realized how to get out.
When A-ri heard me say that, she looked genuinely shocked.
“You've got it? You know how to escape the Far Room? Over sixty years, more than 125,000 people died in it according to the Management Bureau's estimates-”
“No, it's not a way to escape the Far Room.”
I knew how to escape.
But it wasn't a way to escape the Far Room.
“Han Ga-in! I have no idea what you're-”
“I'll explain later. We don't have time.”
I woke from the dream.
* * *
[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 555
Current Location: Room 206, Curse Room - ‘The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days’
Sage’s Advice: 0]
I was back in reality, in a space like the Far Room's pool.
I stood still for a moment and thought.
“A way to escape the Far Room...”
Sorry, but I didn't know how to escape the real Far Room that existed in reality.
This place wasn't the real Far Room, though.
It was only a fake created by A-ri's copy somewhere using Ominous Imagination!
--- Whoosh!
The Sacred Sun flared up.
Flames danced at my fingertips as I transformed into an angel of light again.
When I opened the door, the pink office I'd seen countless times took shape.
A huge hole opened in the wall, revealing another pool beyond it.
The ceiling collapsed, exposing a room filled with dolls.
The floor burst open, and the stale air of an old abandoned factory stung my nose.
In an instant, five rooms had been created.
“Now it begins.”
If I moved into one of the newly formed rooms, every place except that room would disappear.
In other words, if I didn't move, none of the rooms would disappear.
“Come out.”
Standing still, I summoned ‘Sun Ga-in.’
Of course, there was no need to explain things at length.
From the moment he appeared, he knew what he had to do.
--- Rumble! Crash!
An enormous sound, like something from a noisy construction site, pierced my ears.
While I stood still, Sun Ga-in moved into another room and repeated the same actions I'd taken.
Only about twenty seconds passed.
One room became five, and five rooms became twenty-five.
Next would be 125, then 625!
To the being that was creating all these spaces, to A-ri's copy who was surely watching me from somewhere, I said,
“Go ahead. I'm curious how many rooms you can create!”
...
...
...
A total of 272.
That was the limit to the number of rooms A-ri's copy could create.
Before long, every space we had created suddenly turned to glass and began to shatter.
The black-haired girl who appeared at some point was bleeding from her eyes, nose, mouth, and elsewhere. She had already passed out.
She looked to be in considerable pain, so I gave her peace with a light squeeze of the throat.
As the space collapsed around me in real time, I thought.
A real Far Room, not this sloppy imitation, supposedly existed out there in reality.
Naturally, the method I'd used to escape now wouldn't work there.
“...”
A thought suddenly occurred to me.
If I ever got out into reality, wouldn't I surely experience the real Far Room?
Now that was an Ominous Imagination.
--- Flaaash!
The surroundings suddenly brightened.
Soon, a cheerful voice rang out.
“Wow! You made it this far in just one day? You really are incredible!”
At last, the first Demon King worshiper and head of the Order, Ipsissimus, appeared.
Footnotes:
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