Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 498

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 497: Room 207, Gate Room - Second Trial ‘Witch’ (5)

──────

- Lee Eun-sol

The moment the Inquisitor spewed blood and died, the entire courtroom froze.

The commoners of Erenheim were not the only ones left speechless. Elena and I were too.

For one instant, the sheer shock swallowed every sound.

Then time began to move again.

“Eek!”

“Ugh, urgh!”

“Your Honor!”

“It’s the Witch! The Witch!”

People screamed in horror.

--- Splat!

As if it had been waiting, red liquid splashed across my cheek.

I turned to see what it was, only to find that every attendant who had been tying me up had collapsed.

“... Oh my.”

The judge who had sentenced me to death was vomiting blood from all seven orifices as he died.

The attendants who had tried to bind me were dead too, their bodies wrung tight.

At this point, no one could keep their sanity.

“M-Move! Aah!”

--- Crash!

One person flailed as they ran away, as though swimming through the air.

“Please... Please! Eun-sol, spare my life! My daughter... I have a young daughter!”

Someone suddenly pleaded for their life, saying they had a young daughter.

I let out a bitter laugh.

What was I supposed to say?

I had expected something like this, but it was far more extreme than I thought.

I knew the Witch was cruel and impulsive, but I hadn’t expected this much!

I never thought she would kill everyone outright with Elena, who had received God’s Grace, standing right there.

Then Elena, who had finally come to her senses, shouted sharply.

“Catch it!”

Catch it? Had she found the Witch?

--- Flap!

Not the Witch. The Familiar!

Pero swooped down like lightning and snatched up the cat by the window.

Sensing danger, the Witch’s Familiar transformed into a monster with a loud crack!

In an instant, it grew as large as a leopard, its claws impossibly sharp.

Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered even if that cat had grown as large as a tiger!

Pero performed an elegant somersault in midair. Then an enormous monstrous bird appeared, its beak as large as a person’s head.

“Meow?”

The monster cat let out a terrified meow, and I couldn’t help laughing.

It had transformed into a monster itself, but it hadn’t expected a parrot to transform too?

What came next was, quite literally, chaos.

The makeshift courtroom was destroyed in moments as wooden tables and chairs shattered in the frantic fight.

“Argh!”

Most of the city’s people had fled long ago, but a few slow ones got caught up in the brawl between the monsters.

Unfortunately, both the monster cat and Pero were bold beings who did not care about such trivial matters as civilian safety.

...

As the fight drew to a close, Elena and I naturally approached.

The Familiar had returned to the size of an ordinary cat and was panting on the floor.

“It’s been a while.”

“...”

The cat tilted its head as if it couldn’t understand.

Was it because Elena and I had approached together so peacefully?

“Are you all right? There are a few things I want to ask.”

“...”

“Will you tell me who the Witch is?”

“You already know.”

“You never know.”

The cat had named someone I knew after all.

“Did you suspect it, Sis?”

“A little. Ah!”

“What is it?”

“Valentina... Is she at your estate?”

“Probably? I’m not sure.”

“...”

Valentina’s behavior until now had been a kind of hint.

She openly disliked me because of her brother, yet she had never suspected me of being the Witch.

I thought it was because she had spent a long time with the Lee Eun-sol from the setting and had formed a kind of reluctant attachment to her.

That wasn’t it.

She had simply known, or suspected, the identity of the real Witch.

--- Creak! Splat!

Elena, an incomparable beauty, sat on a half-broken wooden chair with a somewhat hollow expression.

“I thought it would be a problem if Thomas died.”

“Me too.”

“He felt like a kind of boss-summoning trigger.”

Elena had felt it too.

If I took a step back and considered it, Thomas’s very existence was bizarre.

He had run around holding a torch and shouting that he would burn me alive, but he himself was nothing more than an ordinary human.

If this had been back when we first entered Room 101, I might have felt threatened.

But now I had Butterfly Dream.

That meant even ten humans like him couldn’t hurt me.

Why had the Hotel placed an NPC like this here?

“Sis, everyone’s run away, so I’ll speak freely. Thomas was ultimately an agent of the Holy See, and the Holy See was this era’s equivalent of the Management Bureau. It seemed to manage only Europe, though.”

“...”

“The Holy See can’t manage the world as meticulously as the Management Bureau of the future.”

“They wouldn’t have the capability. Their technology and resources would be lacking too.”

“Inquisitors are like canaries in a coal mine.”

Canaries in a coal mine.

In the past, miners kept small birds such as canaries and Java sparrows inside mines as a kind of air-quality monitor.

If canaries, which were far more sensitive to air quality than humans, died, it meant the situation was dangerous.

The Inquisitors played a similar role.

The Holy See deployed trained ordinary people throughout Europe, received regular reports from them, and had them personally judge minor cases of Corruption.

What if they died and their regular reports stopped arriving?

It meant there was danger.

“In the setting, a Holy Knight had already been dispatched to Erenheim.”

She meant Cha Jin-cheol.

“What do you think that means?”

“It means the Holy See already suspected Erenheim.”

“Right. Cha Jin-cheol died in that situation, and the Inquisitor sent afterward died too.”

“...”

All the canaries dispatched by the Holy See had died.

So the real thing would come soon.

“A boss?”

“Probably.”

“Then what is the Witch? Is she another kind of boss-summoning trigger?”

“I don’t know...”

I stood up and tightly held Elena’s hand.

Well, this felt like the moment I had to say something apologetic.

What kind of companion was Elena?

Aside from Ga-in wielding the fully charged Sacred Sun and Midnight Mi-ro, Elena was the Party’s strongest fighter.

Then just how monstrous would the boss of a trial that had placed Elena here be?

“... Elena.”

I couldn’t guess the identity of the Judge the Holy See would soon send, but I could guess one thing.

In its fight against Elena, I would be nothing but an obstacle.

“Go.”

“... Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? We each have our own role. Sis, you need to deal with the Witch.”

“...”

“Sis, listen.”

“Hm?”

Did she have something to say?

“I told you about getting a letter from Ga-in on the first day, right?”

“Yeah. You said it told the two of us to proceed together.”

“Thanks to that letter, we figured out why Jin-cheol was eliminated.”

It had surely been because of the accident at the Egyptian Party.

Considering the nature of the Time Lender, the answer was obvious.

“After experiencing that, I had a thought...”

“What thought?”

“A train, a train follows a single track.”

“...”

“Ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, modern America, present-day Korea. They are all one track. It is a structure where earlier events affect what comes later.”

“I suspected as much. It feels a bit like the butterfly effect.”

“The butterfly effect? That’s a good way to put it. Let’s both think about that. Then, good luck!”

“Good luck!”

--- Click!

As I walked through chaos-stricken Erenheim, I thought about the butterfly effect.

The negative butterfly effect that began in Egypt had killed Cha Jin-cheol as soon as this trial began.

Something similar could happen again.

What if we created a negative butterfly effect, such as failing to defeat the boss?

The backlash would make A-ri and Grandfather Mook-seong suffer.

“...”

Could we induce a positive butterfly effect instead?

If we could plant seeds for the companions who would arrive centuries later, things afterward would become easier!

“... Ah.”

The moment that thought reached me, I vaguely understood what I needed to do from now on.

* * *

When I returned home, the first thing I saw was bundles scattered everywhere.

“Valentina.”

“You’re back! I thought it might happen, but you really came back! I want to congratulate you, but as you can see, there’s no time. Let’s pack quickly.”

There were a few household belongings, some jewelry supposedly left by my husband who had died in the setting, and a little food.

“Are you preparing to evacuate?”

“Of course! The Witch, um, killed the Inquisitor, didn’t she? At this rate, we’ll be in danger too. We need to leave Erenheim right away-”

“Well, even if the Witch kills everyone else, I don’t think she’ll kill you or me.”

Valentina froze like stone.

“You don’t mean we should run away from the Witch. You mean we should take the Witch and run away, right?”

“Lee Eun-sol.”

“When did you find out?”

“... Two years ago.”

“Right, right. First, we need to talk with Sophia.”

I looked back on what the Witch had done over the past few days.

She had suddenly sent her Familiar to brutally kill Bruno.

Looking at that alone, it seemed as though she had been trying to trap me.

But when I actually met the cat, it had warned me to run because someone else was coming.

Adding the extreme display from today made the answer clear.

As the Familiar had said, there was no need to ask.

“Mom!”

A cute girl came out of the room with a bright smile.

My daughter in the setting, the person who loved me most in the world.

The Witch, Sophia.

“...”

She killed Bruno because he threatened me through an accusation.

She killed the Inquisitor and his attendants because they tried to put me on the pyre.

She probably hadn’t thought about the aftermath of killing them.

She was young. She didn’t have the judgment to think about what would happen afterward.

“Mommy! Mom! You were okay today, right?”

“... Sophia.”

She had killed many people, yet she didn’t feel the slightest guilt.

She was clearly different from an ordinary human.

I could understand why the Holy See was so determined to kill Witches.

“Mom needs to apologize for one thing today.”

“Hm?”

Did she lack human emotions entirely? That wasn’t quite true either.

She loved me, her mother, and Valentina, her aunt.

That meant she could feel bonds formed through personal relationships.

She simply had no mercy at all for strangers with whom she had no such relationship.

“Sophia, about your cat. I ended up killing it.”

“Timmy? It’s okay! I can make as many talking cats as I want-”

“...”

“... Ah.”

Like the child she was, she confessed she was a Witch within five seconds.

If I had suspected her from the beginning, I might have noticed on the day the trial began.

Would things have gone differently if I had known beforehand?

“Mom, um, you see...”

Confusion, surprise, and a little fear.

“Sophia, are you afraid Mom will scold you?”

“... I was only protecting Mom.”

As I watched the girl make excuses, I naturally understood.

What did it mean that she was worried about being scolded by me?

Sophia lacked much of a conscience, but she at least knew that her actions were evil in other people’s eyes.

So...

Sophia could never grow into a kind person.

But she could imitate one.

“Sophia, come here.”

“Okay!”

“...”

I hugged Sophia, a girl full of pure love, and thought.

The companion among us I understood the least.

The person who alone played a game of Go that no one else could understand.

“...”

I decided to imitate Ga-in a little.

I couldn’t compare myself to that great, or perhaps arrogant, Go player trying to design Room 207’s five-thousand-year history...

But perhaps I could manage two or three hundred years.

* * *

“... A Chaos Disaster of at least Grade 2 has occurred in Erenheim. Holy Knight Cha Jin-cheol and Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada have both fallen.”

“Release Fortuna.”

“Fortuna? Then House Gray will-”

“I will not repeat myself.”

* * *

- Elena

I’d had terrible luck since morning.

A statue hanging on the wall slipped with such precision that it seemed to be trying to assassinate me.

A delicious loaf of buttered bread slid strangely and rolled across the floor.

The corner of a table that had never brushed against me before tore my clothes today as though it were sharpened, and the chair I sat in to rest suddenly had one rotten leg.

Absurd misfortune kept coming, with too many instances to count.

At some point, even the members of the household must have sensed an indescribable ominous feeling, because they fell as silent as mice.

Rain had poured down since morning, making the area around the estate dark even in broad daylight.

Then the shape of a cross appeared through the raindrops.

At last, the Holy See had sent someone.

At that point, Duke Gray, the master of Erenheim, was still calm.

“I’ve been anxious for days, but the Holy See has finally sent a subjugation force!”

“...”

“They say the Witch escaped from the courtroom, so I haven’t slept well at night. Isn’t this a relief?”

“...”

“Elena, let us go greet them together.”

“All right.”