Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 505

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 504: Room 207, Gate Room - Third Trial ‘Miskatonic University’ (6)

──────

- Kim A-ri

「Third Trial: Miskatonic University」

“...”

I woke to sunlight streaming through the window.

--- Creak!

A somewhat shabby room, a creaking wooden bed.

It didn't look like I was living in very comfortable circumstances.

At the Dinner Party, I'd woken up in a fairly presentable dress, but this was completely different.

After looking through the little booklet on the bedside table and learning the basic information, I left the building.

* * *

“So this is Miskatonic University?”

As I looked around the gloomy, eerie university campus and sorted through the situation in my head, I sensed someone's presence.

A tall, well-built man.

His hair had gone gray early, but he looked to be in his late forties or early fifties.

“Oh? Haha! Congratulations!”

“...”

“Congratulations on your rejuvenation! Wow, you look twenty years younger.”

“...”

“How long has it been since I've seen you like this? I never saw you like this even in a Curse Room. It must've been nearly twenty years ago in the real world...”

“Wait. Let's talk.”

“Huh?”

Mook-seong led me to a quiet spot nearby.

Unlike usual, he looked worn-out and exhausted. More than physical fatigue, he seemed mentally drained.

It didn't take long to find out why.

“So you've already used One More Chance once?”

“Yeah.”

“... You were twenty on the first run?”

“That's right.”

Was the Price of Defying Heaven the Hotel had warned about for One More Chance really thirty years of aging?

That was a fairly dangerous Penalty.

Considering the limits of a human lifespan, using it once more would put him in his eighties. It would be dangerous, and from the second use onward, he might die the moment he used it.

Mook-seong was exceptionally fit for a man in his fifties, as befitted an agent, but even he would have a hard time once he was past eighty.

Unless he was some eccentric martial artist who had undergone Rejuvenation!

Rejuvenation?

“... What if?”

“Hm?”

“What if an immortal, or someone who could live an extremely long time, obtained One More Chance?”

“I don't know...”

Would they be able to use One More Chance endlessly with practically no risk?

...

Probably not.

Let's not forget that an Inheritance is different from the original item that existed in each Curse Room.

The original was only a kind of motif. At its core, an Inheritance was a powerful tool the Hotel granted after applying a balance patch.

If the user were immortal or a long-lived species, wouldn't a different kind of Penalty be applied instead?

Either way, one thing was clear.

“We should treat it as having one chance left.”

“... Right.”

“Okay, tell me more about the first run. I think I've forgotten everything.”

With the original item from Room 206, only the Mayor himself retained his memories after turning back time.

I'd expected it, but it seemed even companions lost their memories when One More Chance reversed time.

I didn't know about Mi-ro, who had Immutability, or Ga-in, who had a Status Window, but I had no way to preserve my memories.

“We don't have much time, so listen carefully.”

...

A little later, I understood the situation in broad strokes.

“Just in case... A-ri, do you think Yaldabaoth, the thing the dean summoned, is the boss?”

Probably not.

“You said you were overwhelmed just from meeting its eyes, right? That description is practically Prisoner-level.”

“Um...”

“If it's Prisoner-level, it wasn't made to be an enemy we're meant to fight. It's a Bad Ending that appears when everything falls apart.”

“That seems likely. What about Lucas?”

The dean was still a Mortal, so he would be more manageable than some unidentified Outer God.

If he were truly invincible, he wouldn't have fled from the Holy See in the first place.

Still, just because someone could be killed didn't mean killing them was always the answer.

“I've been thinking. A powerful mage like the dean, who has fought the Holy See for so long, must've considered the possibility that he could die someday.”

Beings who lived for centuries often lost their sense of urgency and let worldly affairs flow past them.

But the dean had lived under threat from the Holy See every day of the year. There was no way he could have been so relaxed.

“Maybe he prepared for what would happen after his death.”

“A magical dead man's switch?”

“Yeah. So let's be careful.”

We discussed two main points regarding what to do next.

“First, we have to prevent the Bad Ending involving the Holy See's massacre and the dean going berserk.”

“Right.”

“Second, there's the artifact storage that only faculty can access. It definitely feels like an important place. I'm not just saying that because I got drenched.”

“Yeah. I think we should check the artifact storage too. I have a feeling...”

“A feeling?”

“Some of the shared tools might be there.”

Pero had already died and been taxidermied, so the remaining shared tools included the Protective Suit, Wing Boots, Kingdom of Dreams, and the Hourglass.

Didn't it seem likely that some of them would be in the artifact storage?

“That makes sense. Let's find a way into the artifact storage.”

As our conversation ended, Mook-seong let out a long sigh.

“Phew...”

“What's wrong?”

He couldn't hide his gloom.

“If I'd known I would get old again this quickly, I would've eaten more meat while I was young!”

“Haha! You're still younger than your original age, so...”

“A-ri, you can never understand me, a human. You were born with a fate of eternal life.”

“...”

I didn't know how to comfort him.

No matter what I said, it would be painful for Mook-seong right now.

Fortunately, the experience from my ‘eternal life’ let me make the right choice.

Sometimes, silence was golden.

* * *

The first Department of Occult Studies lecture I attended, 「Introduction to Demonology」, made me smile wryly.

It was complicated, but in the end, it was a rationale Chaos Entities and occultists had created to justify themselves. I could think of dozens of counterarguments.

What interested me was Mook-seong's reaction.

“I could understand how they felt.”

“...”

“On the previous run, Holy See soldiers mowed down at least a hundred students with automatic weapons. Seeing that, well...”

“You thought it was too much?”

“Yeah.”

Was it really right to slaughter countless innocent people in the name of protecting the world and humanity?

The Management Bureau taught its people, almost to the point of brainwashing, not to even entertain such thoughts.

Think about it the other way around.

Teachings against theft exist because people steal.

Teachings against harming others exist because people harm others.

By the same logic, the teaching not to agonize over it exists because Management Bureau members also suffer over the sacrifice of innocent people.

“It reminds me of the old days.”

“The old days?”

“Every new recruit in the Management Bureau goes through the same doubts you're talking about.”

“Ahem! So these are childish worries only rookies would have? Sorry. My body got younger, so even my mind...”

“No, Mook-seong.”

“...”

“I've never thought those worries were childish. I only thought they were something we had to overcome.”

“Overcome?”

“It happened a long time ago.”

Perhaps because we had time before our next plan, a story I'd buried deep inside because I considered it a shameful memory naturally came to mind.

“There was a company called Saetbyeol Pharmaceuticals in Busan. At the time, it was a very promising mid-sized company. Like any other pharmaceutical company, Saetbyeol Pharmaceuticals developed a new drug.”

“...”

“One day, we received intelligence. Some of the new drug's ingredients were suspicious. It didn't seem like a normal medicine.”

“...”

“If we waited for it to pass all clinical trials and enter distribution, it could cause a major disaster. So before that, one agent and around seventeen operatives were deployed.”

“Were you the agent?”

“Yeah. A few months later, we discovered that the suspicious ingredient in the new drug was a degraded copy of a piece of an Outer God's flesh. Naturally, we concluded that not only the CEO and the pharmaceutical company's executives, but even the employees, were targets for Disposal.”

“The employees too?”

“Many of the employees had taken the new drug because they wanted to get closer to the Great One.”

“They wanted to get closer to the Great One... They were already mentally ill.”

“Right. So there was no disagreement about the employees' Disposal. The problem was their spouses and children.”

“... The employees' spouses and children?”

Mook-seong lowered his head with a dark expression.

Honestly, after hearing this much, Mook-seong must've guessed what case I was talking about.

“The operatives argued a lot. The decision came to me, their superior and the agent in charge. For reference, I was posing as the child of an operative who was posing as an employee.”

“...”

“At the time, I said we should spare the spouses and children for now, have the Management Bureau branch examine them, and then decide whether they required Disposal.”

“...”

“I'd gotten pretty close with some of the children, and they were all so kind and innocent. I even borrowed the power of my Inheritance to conduct a preliminary examination, but I found no particular contamination.”

“... Were there people who argued for their Disposal?”

“Lots of them. The employees themselves had eaten that flesh because they wanted to get closer to the Great One. Didn't that mean they might have fed the same flesh to their families too?”

I still remembered the operative who had tried to persuade me with a face full of despair.

He wasn't some villain or psychopath who enjoyed massacring civilians.

He simply had more experience than me, even if his rank was lower because he wasn't an agent.

“You can't trust an Old Blood examination. Agent A-ri, I know your supernatural ability is remarkable, but isn't that flesh part of the body of a Great One who can command the stars with a single breath? A simple examination can't reveal everything.”

“... So what happened?”

“You know. The children I saved turned into frogs before four days had even passed, croaking away, and then a frog as big as a building appeared in Busan.”

“...”

“When that building-sized frog went croak! a few times, forty-five thousand people died in Busan.”

“...”

“That is enough about the old days. Let's get going.”

There was an epilogue to that story.

After the enormous frog was put down at great cost, the Management Bureau began disciplinary proceedings against me.

At the time, I had no intention of living.

The guilt of knowing more than forty thousand people had died because of my wrong choice had swallowed me whole, from head to toe.

At that moment, even my instinct to someday return to the Hotel and bring Mother back to life had stopped working.

I remembered a conversation with the Management Bureau branch chief who had first taught me, someone whose face was now blurry in my memory.

* * *

‘I admit all responsibility. Just kill me.’

‘Agent Kim A-ri, you look like a child, yet your ego is enormous.’

‘What?’

‘You are a chess piece on the board, a cog in a machine. If ordinary employees are pawns, you are a knight. You are only a slightly bigger cog. Have you ever heard of a cog taking responsibility?’

‘...’

‘If anyone bears responsibility, it is the chess player who failed to see the knight's weakness. It is the machine operator who failed to realize the cog was smaller than expected.’

‘Director □□□...’

‘In other words, it is my responsibility for failing to understand your problem. That's what I put in the report as well.’

‘...’

‘Still, I hope you learned one lesson from this incident.’

‘What is it?’

‘Agent, remember this. Compassion is the most expensive emotion in the world.’

* * *

The place Mook-seong and I arrived at was where Pero's taxidermied body stood.

“Ugh... It's real! How on earth did this thing end up taxidermied?”

“Who knows?”

We had come here after hearing that Pero had been taxidermied, but seeing it with my own eyes made my stomach turn.

Of course, even in the modern world, people sometimes had beloved pets taxidermied, so everyone probably had their own thoughts on the matter.