WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 470: Room 206, Curse Room - The Demon King Who Revives After 100 Days Re (29)
──────
- Kim Mook-seong
The gloomy mansion was steeped in silence.
Seung-yeop, watching outside through binoculars, muttered, “People are gathering.”
“...”
“Do you think they’re planning some kind of protest?”
A protest...
Even someone oblivious would have noticed there was a problem with the water supply by now. It was about time trouble broke out.
“That’s good.”
“Pardon?”
“If they go outside, protest, make noise, and waste their strength, they’ll collapse sooner. That means we’ll have less time to hold out here.”
“I-I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”
Watching Seung-yeop anxiously peer outside brought that damned Scorched-Earth Strategy to mind.
The plan was simple when put roughly.
Before the Demon King could devour humanity, we would cut off humanity’s lifeline with our own hands.
Once the Demon King left Earth because there was no food left, we would use the Ruler of Time to resurrect the dead.
This absurd plan had three major problems.
First, how were we supposed to kill everyone?
There weren’t merely dozens or hundreds of survivors.
There were hundreds of millions in Paradise alone, and more than 2.3 billion people across the world.
Second, what if the Demon King descended in the middle of it?
The Demon King remained quiet because people were being offered to Indomitable Reason every day across the world.
That required powerful control over the city, like the mayor had. Could that kind of control be maintained while the city itself was collapsing?
Once everyone faced death, the Enforcers and agents who had served the ruling class would be the first to stop following orders.
Third, would the Demon King act as we expected?
Let’s say the plan succeeded.
We cut off humanity’s lifeline with our own hands, and the Demon King awoke on an Earth filled with corpses.
Would the Demon King really leave Earth as we hoped?
It already knew about the Prisoner, the participants, and even the Hotel.
“Whew...”
“Grandpa?”
“Don’t mind me.”
Wasn’t this plan riddled with far too many holes?
The fact that everyone had agreed to such a flimsy plan felt like a childish joke.
When I thought of the companion who had pushed the plan hardest, a gloomy thought crossed my mind.
Had we agreed to this plan?
Or had we been ‘made to agree’?
“...Good grief, I’m being ridiculous.”
Then a piercing noise came from far away.
--- Bang! Bang!
“Here! I heard there was water here!”
“We don’t even have enough for ourselves. Leave.”
“Please... Please! M-Miss Elena! You’re listening, aren’t you? My whole family are fans of yours! Just one bottle, for the children-”
--- Bang!
“Eek!”
“That was the last warning shot. Come any closer and the next one goes into your head.”
“Aah...”
It was horrific enough just hearing it from a distance.
Seung-yeop’s expression darkened further beside me.
We had used Elena’s wealth without hesitation to stockpile a fair amount of food and water, and we were all holding out in Elena’s mansion.
Would the people of Paradise, who knew nothing, have made such preparations?
Every day, people came begging for just one bottle of water.
“That’s fortunate.”
“Pardon? W-What’s fortunate about this?”
This kid looked like he couldn’t understand how the word fortunate could possibly apply to this situation, but from my perspective, it truly was fortunate.
What would have happened if the mansion had only people like Seung-yeop in it?
They would have shed a few tears and debated whether to give away a bottle of water when we barely had enough to drink ourselves.
Eun-sol and Jin-cheol weren’t especially reliable when it came to problems like this either.
Fortunately, Mr. Sang-hyeon was a man of firm resolve. He drove the outsiders away without wavering.
“Seung-yeop, go get Song-i.”
The companions who had gone down into the depths had solved the first problem: how to kill all the survivors.
Every back route out of the city had been blocked, and the water supply was slowly being cut off.
The timing was the only question. Destruction was certain.
The people on the surface had to solve the second problem: what if the Demon King descended during the plan?
“...Solve it, huh.”
A hollow laugh escaped me.
Wasn’t this plan simply too cruel?
All I could do was hope salvation awaited at the end of the suffering everyone had to endure.
“Grandpa.”
“Did you hear from the Progenitor?”
“...Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked if I knew why the pipes had been cut. I told her I didn’t.”
“And?”
“...She was worried that Indomitable Reason might become impossible to maintain at this rate.”
“Hmm. It’s starting at last. Prepare yourself too.”
“...You too, Grandpa.”
“I’m always ready.”
When I smiled as if it were nothing, Song-i, whose face had been stiff with tension, smiled too.
Yes. That’s it.
Even if the world ended tomorrow, we had to be able to smile today.
...
Five more days passed, and the water supply was completely cut off.
On the morning after another four days had passed, everyone gathered.
More than a week had gone by without anyone being able to wash, and everyone looked filthy.
No one spoke. They opened canned food and crammed it into their mouths.
Then an indescribably intense sense of wrongness struck everyone.
“Ah!”
“Uh, uh!”
“I-It’s back!”
“It has begun.”
The power of blessings and Inheritances returned.
That meant the Progenitor had lost control of Paradise amid the chaos, and Indomitable Reason had stopped working.
It also meant the Demon King’s Descent was imminent.
“Whew.”
Many people had already withered away from thirst.
Across the planet, at least a billion had probably died.
Yet plenty of people had held out by monopolizing the little remaining water through power and money.
What would happen if the Demon King devoured the people who had survived until now?
They would no longer be able to return to life.
This was the second problem of the Scorched-Earth Strategy.
We were the only ones who could solve it, and there was only one answer.
This was why we had endured within Paradise.
To ‘save,’ at the very least, the people of Paradise.
--- Clap!
“Kids, it starts now.”
“...”
“...”
“Kill them all. Before the Demon King can devour the survivors, we’ll do it with our own hands!”
* * *
When we stepped outside Elena’s mansion, where we had held out for so long, a hellish sight too awful to witness greeted us.
Traces of conflict were visible everywhere. Corpses lay scattered across the ground, and...
--- Riiip! Crunch! Slurp!
Song-i turned away in disgust when she saw someone tearing apart a corpse and drinking its blood to ease their thirst.
Soon, the kids began scattering toward the places they had each decided on.
Where should I go?
“Where is Kadyrov?!”
“We condemn the Progenitor’s lies! We condemn them!”
“You thieves in the Floating Mansion! Come down now!”
“...They’ve still got plenty of energy. To think they still have the strength to protest.”
When I headed for the plaza, I found an enormous crowd of at least several hundred, no, perhaps several thousand people.
None of them had had a proper drink of water for at least three days, yet their ferocity was terrifying.
The force driving them wasn’t stamina, but anger.
Their boundless hatred for the Kadyrov Family, who had turned the city into hell.
Their determination to stab their rulers to death even if it killed them kept them aflame until their final moments.
Of course, their understanding of reality was completely wrong.
The one who had controlled the city until recently wasn’t the Kadyrov Family but the Progenitor, acting through representatives. She bore no responsibility for the water supply being cut off.
We had cut off the water.
“...Kadyrov, step down!”
I joined the protesters, raising my voice with them.
[‘Crowd Psychology’ Activated!]
“Kadyrov, step down! Step down!”
“Step down! Step down!”
As naturally as possible, I moved forward as though I had led the protest from the beginning.
The furious people made way for me as if it were only natural.
“Kadyrov led us into hell!”
“Kadyrov led us-”
“Punish the greedy mayor!”
“Punish them!”
The crowd repeated my words like parrots, as though possessed by something.
Before I knew it, I was standing on the platform, leading them all.
Aha. From that elevated position, I could naturally see what they wanted and how I could achieve my goal.
An indescribably strange sense of omnipotence surged through me, sending a thrill through my body.
I thought Ga-in was strange for liking speeches so much. Now I understood.
“Citizens suffering from thirst! Listen to me!”
“We’re listening! We’re listening!”
The crowd was enormous, and there wasn’t even a loudspeaker.
I thought the people in the back might not hear me, but that wasn’t the case.
Strangely, everyone was focused on every word I said and every movement I made.
“Let’s go to the Floating Mansion! Let us bring heavenly punishment down upon those Kadyrov demons!”
“Heavenly punishment! Heavenly punishment!”
“Let’s go!”
The Floating Mansion above Paradise had once been the most noble place in the city.
Now, it was where everyone’s hatred converged.
--- Rumble!
“...”
A bizarre sound came from the sky.
Surely, it was a sign that the Demon King was awakening.
I quickened my pace and continued shouting.
“Heavenly punishment upon Kadyrov!”
“Heavenly punishment! Heavenly punishment!”
“Punish the sinners!”
“Punish them! Punish them!”
The thirsty, starving crowd should have had no strength left in their bodies, so weak that it wouldn’t have been strange for them to collapse.
Yet hatred led them all the way to the area near the Floating Mansion.
The panting people stared blankly at the Floating Mansion in the sky above the city.
An unknown person asked me as if seeking an answer.
“H-How do we do it?”
“Do what?”
“The mansion, the mansion is in the sky! We have to bring heavenly punishment down on it. We have to punish them... We have to burn those Kadyrov pieces of trash to death!”
“That’s a good thought. Carry that feeling up to them.”
“Then how?! The mansion is in the sky-”
I turned to the crowd and smiled.
“What are you all worried about? Look, there are pipes leading to the Floating Mansion.”
Climb.
Climb up and pour out your hatred.
Climb the pipes until you die from exhaustion!
* * *
- Kim Sang-hyeon
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people clung to metal pipes and climbed dozens of meters.
It would have been impossible even with healthy bodies. There was no way they could do it with bodies weakened over several days.
Naturally, the people climbing the pipes soon slipped and fell to the ground.
What happened next was truly grotesque.
The people who fell climbed the pipes again as though possessed. They fell, climbed, fell, and climbed again.
Even as people fell to their deaths right beside them, those nearby rushed at the pipes as if they had gone blind.
They would surely repeat that action until they collapsed dead from exhaustion.
Was this like lemmings jumping into the water together even while watching others drown before them?
“Agent, you really are doing something incredible.”
I had thought this for a long time.
We saw one another every day and lived like friends, so we didn’t notice it in one another, but the Hotel Party was no longer human.
There were only demigods who mistook themselves for humans, and demigods who could no longer deceive even themselves.
To be born human and gradually become something nonhuman.
It could never be a good thing.
Hadn’t we experienced it countless times in the Hotel?
Gods, demons, transcendents: at their core, all of them were beasts.
“...”
It was nothing more than meaningless contemplation.
After all, I was no different.
It was time to make a decision for the greater good instead of clinging to half-hearted sympathy.
I stretched out my hand toward the most densely populated place in Paradise, where so many apartment buildings stood packed together that they could not be counted at a glance.
“I really want to change this childish activation phrase. ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’”
The moment a beam of light pierced through more than ten apartment buildings, the triangle that remained within the heart of the human Kim Sang-hyeon asked:
‘Do you believe today’s murders disappear just because time will be turned back afterward?’
I answered.
‘Haven’t we already come too far? I can only hope today’s suffering becomes the foundation for future salvation.’
Footnotes:
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