WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 503: Room 207, Gate Room - Third Trial ‘Miskatonic University’ (5)
──────
- Kim Mook-seong
There was something I'd been thinking about often lately.
What was youth?
Some might emphasize the difference in remaining lifespan or personal wealth, but lately, I'd been feeling the most important difference down to my bones.
Youth was being able to gorge yourself on meat until you were stuffed without wondering whether you'd be able to digest it.
It also meant being able to wet your throat with beer and wine without having to remember what the doctor told you last month!
What? If you loved meat and alcohol while you were young, you'd suffer when you got old?
What did that have to do with me?
The Hotel was supposed to worry about my health, not me!
“Another beer here.”
As I enjoyed the smooth foam and looked around, the place was packed with lively young students.
Quite a few had already turned red as persimmons, apparently too young to know their limits.
It was 1897, a time when female students and professors were rare.
Still, there were exceptions everywhere, and Miskatonic University's Department of Occult Studies was a prime example.
Was it because the Hotel Party, who were practically people from the future, had intervened in the Department of Occult Studies or the group that preceded it?
Where there were flowers, bees gathered. That was the way of the world.
There were many female students in the Department of Occult Studies, so a huge number of students from other departments had come here hoping to take advantage of that.
The department didn't seem inclined to stop students from other departments, either.
Maybe they thought this kind of natural interaction between men and women would help expand their group.
“...”
I'd told A-ri I was going to the party to gather information, but I hadn't gotten any real results.
The only thing I'd learned was that Miskatonic University's students were doing their best for the future of the New World.
Every time I turned my gaze, I saw men and women mingling in dark corners, tirelessly working to raise the New World's birth rate.
But if a werewolf and a yeti mated, what race would their child be?
They needed to settle details like that for the sake of their future children!
A wolf yeti?
“Wow! I had a hard time finding you, but here you are!”
“...”
“Hey, your name was, uh, Mook-seong?”
A group of students sidled up, acting friendly.
Under normal circumstances, I would've talked to them for information, but their intentions were so obvious that I couldn't help sighing.
“So, um, uh-”
“You want to know where A-ri is?”
“You catch on quick! Why isn't that, uh, noble vampire lady at the party? My family has traditionally maintained ties with Europe's Bloody Nobles-”
“There are a lot of students here who aren't from the Department of Occult Studies. Is it okay to say things like that?”
“Haha, everyone's drunk, and they think the Department of Occult Studies is a gathering of weirdos, so they don't care. As long as nobody transforms, it's fine.”
“...”
“So, where is Miss A-ri?”
You stupid, gullible bastard!
I'd been asked where A-ri was at least a million times today!
And what was this nonsense about his family?
If your father saw you looking this pathetic, he'd cut off your allowance and write you a letter telling you to come home at once.
“... Your name was Karl, right?”
“That's right!”
“This party, is there some special event? Other than eating, drinking, and dancing.”
“Huh? A special event...? It's an opening party. Isn't eating, drinking, and dancing enough?”
“...”
Fair point.
A bunch of kids only needed food, drinks, and dancing for a party.
Then complaints began to rise behind me.
“Ah, what the hell!”
“Hey! Watch where you're going!”
“Violins? Did the student council invite a singer too?”
People carrying violin cases began entering the hall.
Their movements were rather rough, and the students they bumped into complained, but the performers didn't seem to care.
“Huh? What's this?”
The idiot who had been looking for A-ri until moments ago looked flustered.
“What is it?”
“Uh, uh...”
“What?”
“I, um, I'm on the student council. We didn't invite any performers.”
The student council hadn't invited performers?
Then who-
“Damn it!”
“Huh? Why all of a sudden? Where are you going?”
Make decisions quickly, act discreetly!
Without a moment's hesitation, I slipped into a blind spot in the lighting.
Fortunately, Miskatonic University had thoughtfully provided plenty of dark, gloomy spaces where I could hide to help promote the New World's birth rate.
“Oh my! Eek!”
“What the hell is this bastard doing?”
Of course, there were already people here dreaming of love across racial boundaries!
“Hey, hey! You! You're a junior, aren't you? You damn Asian, you don't know your place-”
“Miss, this man has two wives back home.”
“W-what did you say?”
“You crazy bastard-”
“He has three children too. This is my fist of justice for you, miss.”
I threw a hook at the idiot gaping at me, and he immediately went down. The female student ran away in shock.
“...”
I watched the party from the darkness.
Soon, the suspicious people disguised as musicians who had blended in among the students began exchanging glances.
--- Click!
--- Rat-a-tat!
In an instant, they drew automatic firearms and began firing in every direction!
“You crazy bastards!”
These were the Holy See's men, right?
They were really opening fire with automatic weapons in the middle of a university?
Even from the perspective of a Management Bureau agent, this was too much!
Not that we didn't do things this crazy too. Sometimes.
--- Rat-a-tat! Bang!
“Eek!”
“Ugh, aargh-”
“Gurgle!”
In an instant, countless students' heads exploded and limbs flew through the air.
Quite a few students simply stood there trembling with their mouths open before being slaughtered like sheep.
Maybe they thought it was all a drunken hallucination until the moment they died.
“Grrk!”
The moment I clenched my teeth and made a fist, a round, hard object appeared in my palm.
The power that could resolve this entire situation: ‘One More Chance.’
“...”
I barely held back the urge to flick the coin immediately.
Not yet. It wasn't time yet.
One More Chance wasn't an Inheritance I could use safely and comfortably like Song-i's bracelet or Eun-sol's Flute!
The Hotel itself had called it the Price of Defying Heaven, so it was highly likely there was a limit on how many times I could use it.
I'd wait until the final moment, until a lead bullet pierced my gut and I was about to breathe my last!
--- Tap tap tap!
I tried everything I could, hiding behind trees as shields and diving into ponds.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Holy See's fanatics who were mad for slaughter weren't targeting me alone, so I somehow managed to hold out.
After what felt like a hundred years, though it was actually only four or five minutes, something finally changed.
--- Rumble!
From the sky, a human figure came crashing down like lightning.
He appeared with thunder, a being far beyond the limits of humanity.
He was an old man.
He was the man who had warned A-ri and me not to touch the taxidermied specimens a few days ago.
He was also the dean.
“The master steps away, and vermin crawl in!”
The dean's furious voice rang out, and bolts of lightning spread in every direction.
The soldiers who had been massacring students as though hunting wild boars were turned to ash three or four at a time with a single gesture from the dean.
“Aim! Alpha Team, shoot him in the head!”
“Gamma, Gamma! The guns aren't working! An invisible wall- Aaargh!”
The Holy See's soldiers faced him without fear, showing that they were trained elites, but they were no more than foxes before a tiger.
How could human infantry stop a high-grade Chaos Entity that blocked bullets with an opaque barrier and hurled lightning?
Soon, a man who seemed to be the leader of the Holy See's special forces was caught in the dean's grasp.
“You bastard...! I, I will show you the very limit of pain a human can suffer!”
“Hahaha! You pathetic wizard, nothing will change no matter what you do!”
“...”
“Look around you! The young devils from this grotesque university have spilled their guts all over the ground! Isn't it beautiful?”
At that moment, the dean's expression was impossible to describe with any clumsy words humans had made.
“You people... What in the world...?”
“What, do you have something to say?”
“Do you even know that most Miskatonic University students have nothing to do with our fight?”
“Heh... Is that why you built a university? You thought that if you hid among civilians in the New World, we wouldn't dare act rashly?”
“...”
The exchange between the Holy See soldier and the dean contained a great deal of information.
Why had the dean's group established a university?
Was it simply to train young Chaos Entities and occultists?
That couldn't be it. As the dean said, the Department of Occult Studies was only one part of Miskatonic University.
Put simply, ordinary students studying economics, politics, administration, law, and the like were innocent civilians who knew nothing about vampires or werewolves.
...
The dean had thought that mixing the students among a majority of ordinary humans would make the Holy See respect at least some limits!
Even if they sent assassins, had he expected them to precisely target professors and students from the Department of Occult Studies?
Maybe he hadn't been familiar with personal automatic weapons in the first place.
“Hehehe... You monster who grew old for nothing! Listen.”
“...”
“You've seen moldy bread before, right?”
“...”
“What did you do? Cut out the moldy part and eat the rest? Haha! Of course not! Fuck! Is there only one loaf of bread? How many loaves are there? How could you keep doing that shit?”
“...”
“And do you think the parts of moldy bread that look fine are really fine? Of course you fucking burn it all-!”
My breath caught.
Because I found myself thinking that what the Holy See soldier said was logically valid.
This vast, boundless world, with a population of eight billion that kept growing without rest even now.
The Management Bureau's resources were unfathomable, but the Earth was even larger, and its population was even greater.
When a Chaos Disaster occurred, were we supposed to inspect every single human in the affected area and determine whether they had suffered Corruption?
A single district in tiny South Korea had three or four hundred thousand people.
And could we be sure that civilians in a city where demon worshippers hid were truly innocent?
They had to be killed.
Not because we were cruel and wicked.
Not because we thought the weight of a hundred thousand lives was insignificant, but to stop the plague from spreading to ten million Seoul residents, fifty-two million Koreans, and eight billion humans!
“...”
The next moment, I saw the university, where blood flowed like a river.
Students riddled with holes across their bodies, rolling across the ground.
Most of them probably didn't even know what kind of person the dean was.
I also saw the dean, his expression showing something beyond anger and sorrow, closer to emptiness.
And I reached one clear realization.
Leaving aside whether the Holy See's logic and the Management Bureau's logic were right or wrong...
Those on the receiving end could never accept them!
“If you truly intend to cross the line in the name of protecting people, then I have no choice but to cross it as well!”
--- Crackle!
An indescribable pressure, both tangible and intangible, emanated from the dean.
Was he about to use some kind of trump card?
What was he planning to-
Then a sharp voice rang out from the air.
“Lucas!”
The girl who descended from the sky had magnificent blonde hair that could not be hidden even in the darkness.
Her striking appearance let me recognize her at once.
Wasn't she Emily, the one who had been clinging to A-ri since yesterday?
“Lucas, please calm down! Are you going to forget our master's teachings? Yaldabaoth isn't the kind of being you think it is-”
“Sophia.”
Sophia? Not Emily?
“Sophia, I've thought about this enough. I also know very well what kind of being Yaldabaoth is.”
“Lucas! Master-”
“Master! That damned master! Sophia, do you still respect that fool who searched for Horus until the moment of death?”
“... Lucas. Master isn't dead yet-”
“I believe in nothing. Not Master, not Horus, not anything!”
Information poured in without pause. I focused with all my might so I wouldn't miss a single word.
Emily's real name was Sophia.
The dean's name was Lucas, and he and Sophia were fellow disciples.
Their master had searched for Horus until the moment of death.
Horus was Ga-in, right?
If so, there was a strong possibility that their master had been part of the Hotel Party-
--- Rumble!
Lightning struck once again.
“Aaargh!”
Sophia screamed and fell, apparently never expecting the dean to attack her.
“Behold! This is the only answer I have found! Ah...”
Incomprehensible magical power twisted everything around us, and a bizarre chant poured from the dean's mouth.
“For the truly great, there is no distinction between beginning and end. At last, the true Creator shall rise and reshape the false world.... Please become our salvation. If that cannot be, then become the end of all suffering instead.”
At last, an otherworldly gate shining like twilight began to spill ominous light.
When I felt a distant being beyond it, one so vast that I feared even meeting its gaze...
I knew that now was the time to begin again.
--- Ting!
The golden coin spun once.
...
At that final moment, I wondered about two things.
First, could A-ri retain her memories through One More Chance's regression?
Second, what was the Price of Defying Heaven the Hotel had warned about?
--- Boom!
Footnotes:
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