WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 491: Room 207, Gate Room - First Trial ‘Eternal Life and Resurrection’ (9)
──────
- Cha Jin-cheol
My body felt heavy.
My limbs wouldn't move the way I wanted them to.
Ha. If someone heard my thoughts, they'd think I was seriously injured or something!
Like the others, I had only lost my Blessing.
That was all...
Yet my body felt strangely heavy.
* * *
“To the palace! Things will get complicated if Menes escapes!”
The polite way Sang-hyeon usually spoke had vanished from his voice.
That had to mean he was in a real hurry.
It made sense.
If that lizard Pharaoh ran off into the desert, was there any way we could catch him?
This was so long ago that the land around Egypt was apparently closer to jungle or grassland than desert, but I had no idea whether that was good for us or not!
When we reached Menes's palace in Memphis, shouts rang out from every direction.
“For the Pharaoh!”
“Glory to the great Menes!”
The Pharaoh's royal guard stood clad in sturdy armor and armed with spears.
Their presence was intimidating, but they were still only human.
They were no longer enemies worth fighting.
“Mi-ro! Summon Ga-in for a moment!”
Sang-hyeon wanted to send me back for a bit and summon Ga-in.
There were only about three minutes of Ga-in's remaining time in the Time Lender, so it would be tight.
Still, an army of humans like this would collapse the moment Ga-in summoned the Sacred Sun. We could subdue them in five seconds!
This wasn't a bad situation, was it?
“Okay... Aah!”
“Argh, you crazy bastards!”
Mi-ro cried out in shock, and Sang-hyeon cursed.
The Pharaoh's royal guard, who had looked ready to fight us at any moment, had suddenly begun killing themselves!
“Glory to the great Menes!”
“Menes, the eternal and immortal one...”
“I offer all of my body and soul.”
It was too sudden, too unimaginable for us to stop them.
We were just standing there going, What? What the hell? By the time we came to our senses, more than three hundred royal guards had become corpses, their blood flowing like a river into the palace...
Into the palace?
“Fuck! Those lizard bastards! Charge!”
As we ran in a frenzy, I asked, “Sang-hyeon, what is this?”
“The Reptilian princess could see fate by killing several human children and using their lives as payment! She said Menes gave her that power!”
I understood immediately.
The Reptilian princess could see fate through human life force, so Menes had to possess something similar or even stronger!
Right now, Menes had used the royal guards' lives to do something.
“Hah... He must have decided human royal guards wouldn't work against us.”
“He must've known we can control crowds with Horus's power!”
“Horus? What's that?”
“... Let's go!”
The more I thought about what had just happened, the more my teeth ground together.
A king's royal guard would naturally be fiercely loyal.
But still, the Pharaoh told them to kill themselves, and hundreds of royal guards immediately did it?
How thoroughly, and for how long, had these damned lizards brainwashed humans?
And if they were going to pull this shit, they could have made them kill themselves inside the palace before we arrived. Instead, they made them do it right in front of us.
The lizard king's malice seemed to echo in my ears.
Did you see it through your pitiful eyes?
This is the fate of you primitive hairless mammals.
You are my livestock, nothing more than magical power batteries.
--- Bang!
“Come out! Menes, you dog bastard, no, you lizard bastard!”
Then, for the first time, I heard the Pharaoh's voice.
“I have always been here.”
* * *
The Pharaoh's palace was dark and murky.
“I was worried you'd run away with your tail between your legs. You had no intention of doing so?”
“I am the master of the Nile River, the creator of the greatest civilization. Would a master flee from his own land?”
His words flowed as smoothly as water. I was impressed for only a moment before Sang-hyeon spoke with anger in his voice.
“Menes, I didn't know you had such a cruel talent.”
“... Cruel, you say.”
“Did you deliberately hide this power when you fought Malkab? Because you thought we'd get angry?”
“Priest of Horus, I can hear anger in your voice. What has made you so angry?”
Was this bastard making fun of us right now?
“This lizard bastard, I've had about enough-”
“You there, burly man. I have not seen you before. Does the snowflake-like young lady behind you possess the power to summon angels?”
The power to summon angels.
That was probably what the Time Lender looked like from the outside.
“I have been thinking since earlier. How did things turn out this way? I did not think I needed to fight you.”
He had not thought he needed to fight us.
“Is it because we are not human? If that is such a great problem, why do you worship Horus? He is no more human than we are.”
Menes's point was that if Reptilians being inhuman was the problem, Horus was not human either.
... Who the hell was Horus? Why was everyone making such a fuss over him?
“Or is it because I sacrificed the royal guard just now? If that is enough to make you so angry, look at yourselves. More than two thousand people have become a mob and are burning the capital of Ancient Egypt. Surely you do not believe there will be no sacrifices in that process?”
Menes pointed out that we, too, were killing ordinary people for our goal.
Oh!
Had he been sitting in this dark palace, working hard to come up with arguments?
It actually sounded plausible.
“What sophistry-”
“If you believe it is sophistry, then refute it.”
Sang-hyeon faltered as the Pharaoh spoke coldly.
...
I suddenly laughed.
Sang-hyeon seemed flawless, yet could be surprisingly careless at the strangest times.
This wasn't a fight that would be decided by talking. Why argue with words?
Without hesitation, I threw the spear at my waist toward the source of the voice.
--- Whoosh! Ting!
The spear shot forward like lightning and scraped the Pharaoh's armor. Then I heard an unmistakably furious voice.
“What! One who claims to be the angel of wise Horus, how can you be so-”
--- Bang!
“Hey! I don't even know who Horus is!”
Flames flared.
Light poured in from all directions, and the darkness faded away.
At last, Menes rose from his throne.
* * *
--- Crackle!
The air heated up in an instant. A whip came flying at an invisible speed!
The moment the fight began, I realized it.
I had clearly heard that this lizard bastard's pure physical abilities were no better than a frail old man's!
After devouring the royal guards' life force, Menes had returned to being the very demigod who had unified the Nile River region hundreds of years ago.
Superhuman strength and acceleration.
Enhanced reflexes and dynamic visual acuity.
On top of that, a bit of telekinesis and the ability to create fire!
Those were only the supernatural powers I had seen with my own eyes. There was definitely more.
--- Thud!
“Hah... Priest, you are quite good at fighting too?”
Sang-hyeon's Spear Technique, honed through the long years he had spent in the prehistoric era of Room 203, was clearly incredible.
He was blocking Menes's whip strikes even though they flew so fast they broke the sound barrier and could not be seen!
“You are still human. Would it not be wiser to call upon your god even now?”
“Ghk!”
But the tip of the whip wrapped around his spear and writhed like a snake, greedily tearing away flesh. Even Sang-hyeon could not hold back a cry.
One, two, three.
The exchanges continued, and the same thing happened every time.
Menes did not waver an inch, while our blood soaked the palace.
“You began with such spirit, yet you are human in the end.”
As Menes mocked the limits of humanity, I looked over the situation.
The former doctor and special forces soldier had bled so much his face had gone pale, and his left ankle was bent backward.
The high school girl had taken just one of Menes's attacks, but her arm was half torn off and she was on the verge of passing out.
And me, with a fist-sized hole in my back.
We were close to our limits in every way.
Ironically, the only reason we had held on this long was because Menes had been conserving his strength.
“Would it not be wiser to call upon Horus even now?”
I finally understood.
The Horus he kept talking about was Ga-in.
We weren't summoning him because he had almost no time left, but Menes did not know that.
“Or can you no longer call upon him? Hahaha! Then this is too easy!”
Why was this fight so difficult?
We had not entered the palace without thinking.
Final Flash had destroyed most of the robots, and we had Yumi's magic and Song-i's bracelet.
We thought that would be enough.
--- Swish! Boom!
“Guh!”
Another exchange, and we lost again.
More than any other ability, speed was the problem.
Menes was almost impossible to see.
That made it too difficult to hit Menes with Song-i's bracelet effect or Yumi's magic.
Even when an attack barely grazed him, Menes endured it with his strange power.
...
When I looked behind me, I saw the two girls at a loss and the Witch busy protecting them.
Mi-ro trembled as she clutched the watch.
Was she planning to send me back and use what little time A-ri or Ga-in had left?
Yumi calmly took Mi-ro's hand.
As though she were saying this was not Mi-ro's battlefield, so she should stay out of it.
Even if we summoned either of them, would anything change?
Could A-ri land an attack on Menes when he was that fast?
The same went for Ga-in, whose Sacred Sun was empty.
We needed speed.
We had to keep up with Menes's speed to win.
Then Yumi looked at me.
In that instant, we knew we were thinking of the same power.
“Yumi!”
Honestly, I was no different from Mi-ro.
The battlefield the Hotel had prepared for me was the second trial, not here.
I didn't care anymore.
“Hngh!”
The girl's sharp hand shot toward me, pierced my skin, and grabbed my spine. Agonizing pain surged through me, as though my entire body were being burned alive.
One second felt like a month, and ten seconds felt like a year.
In that brief span, my body changed into something entirely different.
The power I had used once while Yumi was hiding in my head, the power that had brought down the thunder-summoning wolf!
Put positively, it drew out every last possibility of the human body.
Put negatively...
“Hah... These monster bastards called us monsters?”
Menes's bewildered words were ridiculous.
The transformation had barely finished when a small voice tickled my ear.
“Finish it quickly.”
Beast Transformation.
Yumi could only use it on someone whose physical data she knew inside and out, and the backlash was so severe that it could not last long.
The Hotel's rule was simple. The greater the cost, the greater the reward.
A fighter's strength returned to me.
For this moment, it felt as though the Blessing of Courage had returned.
“Raaah!”
The spear shot out like a storm and collided with Menes's whip. I threw the spear, tangled with the whip, straight at Menes.
I saw Menes's shocked expression.
I saw the Pharaoh lose his balance and stagger as he dodged the spear.
I saw the lizard king hurriedly turn toward me!
At last, I could keep up with his speed.
As the distance closed, I could clearly see Menes throw away the whip and raise his bare fist!
I suddenly laughed.
“You bastard, isn't this kind of fight way too favorable for me?”
Did this idiot even know?
I was a fucking successful MMA fighter!
I turned Busan upside down once in Room 101.
I got shot to death by that insane Busan mayor, but still.
The Pharaoh's fist flew toward my head. I lightly slapped his wrist aside and punched his abdomen.
He immediately doubled over like a bow.
Then came a left hook. This time, the Pharaoh's ridiculous mask shattered and several teeth flew out.
“Guh!”
What, a knee strike this time?
There was no way he could put proper power into it from such a compromised stance-
--- Boom!
“Fuck!”
He could!
Remember this. If someone has super acceleration and monstrous strength, they can kick hard enough to break concrete even with terrible form.
As I steadied myself after being knocked back, Menes gained a little breathing room and shouted.
“You ignorant, vulgar ape-like bastard!”
“You fucking bastard, I graduated from a four-year university!”
“What are you even saying, mud-pig bastard!”
“Hey, if you're a Pharaoh, fucking speak with some class!”
“Can a priest of Horus live as recklessly as you do?”
“What do you mean, recklessly? I've worked my ass off!”
Then Menes covered his eyes with both hands and flailed about!
“Aaagh!”
Diverse Perspectives!
Song-i had struggled to target Menes because he was so fast, but now that Menes had slowed after getting beaten by me, she succeeded.
“You cowardly bastards-”
“Raaah!”
Cowardly my ass!
The beast's fist shot out like thunder and pierced through the Great Pharaoh's chest.
“...”
In his final moments, Menes wore an utterly hollow expression.
“Huh... The ways of the world truly cannot be understood.”
“Don't start acting cool now!”
“No one will survive...”
?
The intense instinct the Hotel had trained into me flashed through my mind.
This felt like a final move meant to take us down with him!
--- Rumble!
As if it had been waiting, violent tremors, noise, and intense light began coming from outside.
“...”
Looking at my panicked companions, I realized something.
I had entered this room for this very moment.
It looked like this was as far as I went.
* * *
- Aedia
I saw light.
A fierce light that looked ready to wipe Memphis away in an instant.
In the past, I would have had no idea what was happening.
...
Strangely, I thought I understood.
A moment ago, Menes's half-destroyed Golden Legion had been near the royal palace. No.
M-1842 Autonomous Pioneer Unit No. 13 had attempted to self-destruct, intending to blow away most of Memphis.
And a strange power that twisted the world had stopped that self-destruction.
“...”
What was this knowledge?
Was I really a monster from beyond the night sky?
“...”
Menes held the authority to control the Pioneer Units.
The fact that Menes had caused a precious Pioneer Unit, one that could no longer be made, to initiate self-destruction meant Menes had lost.
“...”
I wanted to let go of everything.
I wanted to leave my fate to the raging crowd like this.
I no longer wanted to live.
Just as I was about to give up on everything, he appeared with the snowflake-like Saintess.
“Princess of the lizards, what are you thinking right now?”
That day, I understood for the first time.
The best cure for depression was revenge!
Footnotes:
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