WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 540: Room 207, Gate Room - Fourth Trial ‘The Fallen King’ (26)
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- Kim Mook-seong
Three years had passed since that day. Was I almost into my fourth year now?
On a day of driving rain and wind, A-ri came to visit.
“Long time no see.”
“We've had a few video calls.”
“Come on! That's different from seeing each other in person. Where's First?”
“He suddenly disappeared yesterday. Oh, he said to call him Second now.”
“Second... I guess he doesn't want to see me.”
Over a cup of tea, we discussed the state of things.
“The situation looks bad. It feels like a world war could break out at any moment.”
“There'll be local conflicts, but I don't think it'll go that far.”
“Because they'll kill and absorb each other before then?”
“Exactly.”
A brief silence followed.
Then A-ri brought up a rather sensitive subject.
“I've spent the last three years thinking about it. What on earth was Ga-in thinking when he split himself apart and caused all this?”
“That really is the biggest mystery.”
“I think I know one thing.”
I had a feeling I knew what that one thing A-ri wanted to say was.
“... Restoring the world to how it was, right?”
“You guessed it too.”
Three years was a fairly long time by the Hotel's standards.
With nothing much to do during all that time, I'd done plenty of thinking.
“If I were Ga-in, I think the first Enlightenment would have been that turning back time was useless.”
Turning back time was useless.
Why?
If you knew the answer, you could guess the reasoning too.
“Mook-seong, the point you went back to was probably already too late.”
“Whew...”
By then, the plan we'd made outside had already gone wrong.
“He was backed into a corner. He moved forward trusting in regression, but that fell apart. So what was he supposed to do?”
You couldn't solve it by turning back time.
Then you had to solve it in the present, without turning time back.
“First, he has to nullify what Aedia did. In other words, he has to return people to how they were.”
Return people to how they were.
“I thought of something that supports this too. Think of the beings Yaldabaoth touched in the past.”
Beings Yaldabaoth had twisted in the past.
Aedia, Park Seung-yeop or Fortuna, Kim A-ri, Han Ga-in, and others.
“Doesn't something occur to you? They all have stronger free will than you'd expect.”
Fortuna, who ultimately returned to being Seung-yeop and slaughtered the Guardian.
A-ri, who endured her disgust and helped us.
Han Ga-in's double, who killed himself for the final victory.
Aside from the somewhat ambiguous Aedia, every one of them had a distinct character of their own.
“I don't know if it's Yaldabaoth's limitation or the Great One's preference... but it means they don't just sit still like puppets.”
Yaldabaoth's creations were surprisingly free-spirited.
If that was the case, then returning to how they were might not be impossible either.
“A few days ago, the outer wall of the parking garage collapsed, so I called a contractor.”
“Really?”
“They asked for money. Said if I had no money, I should give them something else.”
“Self-interest is coming back. Is that Serena's influence, since this is America?”
“Who knows. It could be because of the noisy news every day.”
Ga-in's 348,000 Fragments scattered across the world.
The enormous bloody conflicts waged by those who accepted the Fragments in order to ascend.
Whether they'd awakened to the Grimoire's power or the Sacred Sun's power, they all had one thing in common.
They influenced at least hundreds of people, and in some cases hundreds of millions.
Self-interest.
Hostility.
Lies.
Human “virtues” like those were beginning to return.
Not every change had been negative.
“As you know, I'm helping Jin Mok-gyeong. Three days ago, he showed me an official document like this.”
“... An order banning the hunting of Hate Entities?”
“For reference, ‘Hate Entities’ here means-”
“Humans, I assume. So it's an order banning the hunting of humans. There's something similar here too.”
I handed A-ri a poster lying on one side of the table.
“Pseudo-Human Containment Zone?”
“They're creating a containment zone and herding the surviving ten percent of humanity into it. That has its own problems, but... it's better than the days when they fed them to Chaos Entities on sight.”
The instinctive hatred the ninety percent felt toward the ten percent was fading.
Before, they would've fed them to demons without a trace of guilt.
Now, people were beginning to consider the rights of Pseudo-Humans.
All the signs pointed to one fact.
“The things the Holy Mother erased from Paradise are coming back.”
A-ri scratched her cheek as she answered.
“So the curse that turned humans into idiots is being lifted...”
“A curse that turned them into idiots?”
“That's how the British Prince put it.”
“It's not entirely wrong.”
The first answer in Han Ga-in's solution was to erase Aedia's wrong answer.
So far, it seemed to be proceeding smoothly, but a question still remained.
“A-ri, I thought of this much too, but I have no idea what comes after.”
“What are you curious about?”
“Why did Aedia struggle so desperately in the first place? Because the state of the world was that terrible!”
“That's true.”
“Even if we erase Aedia's wrong answer, we'll only return to how things were. That original state had plenty of problems too.”
“Right.”
“Then shouldn't we do something about that original state too? I think that's the only way we'll get a resolution judgment for Room 207.”
Let's say the first step was erasing Aedia's wrong answer.
Erasing a wrong answer didn't produce the right one.
It only left a blank page, and submitting that alone would earn a zero.
After erasing the wrong answer, shouldn't we write a new answer on that blank page?
I couldn't even begin to guess what “our answer” was.
“...”
A-ri fell silent.
I was left puzzled.
Soon, A-ri murmured carefully.
“I don't know that part. It's hard to fully understand the thoughts of someone smarter than us.”
I think that was the first time I'd heard A-ri honestly admit someone else's superiority like that.
“This is what I think.”
“This much?”
“It probably isn't some ultimate answer worth a perfect score. I don't think the Hotel expects that much either. Maybe it only wants a vague sense of direction.”
“...”
Not an ultimate answer, but a direction that could make things better than they were now.
Even I thought that was probably all the Hotel wanted.
Still, I didn't know what that direction was.
It was hard to understand the thoughts of someone smarter than me.
“Let's leave Ga-in's story there. So, how have you and Mi-ro been?”
“I don't know exactly what Mi-ro's doing. She's been missing since that day. I told you over a video call.”
“You said she was missing, but you also said you had an idea what she was trying to do.”
“I do. She's probably doing something similar to me.”
Mi-ro had disappeared.
Still, A-ri said Mi-ro was doing something similar to her.
“Then what are you doing?”
A-ri gave a slight smile and brought over a small bag.
“Farming.”
“What?”
“I found a few things with the Compass.”
“No, what nonsense are you suddenly-”
“Mook-seong. Room 207 is probably the past of the world outside the Hotel. You could call it an adaptation of the latest world scenario.”
“... Probably.”
“Have you thought about what that means?”
Room 207 was the past of the world outside the Hotel.
That meant some of Room 207's variables also existed in reality.
“The Mirror must exist in reality too.”
“What else?”
“... The Reptilian invasion probably really happened in Ancient Egypt too. Of course, without our intervention, things must have played out completely differently.”
“What else?”
“Is there more? I don't think there'd be any overlap in people.”
A-ri gave me her usual mischievous look.
“Honestly, you only ever see half the picture.”
“... Hey. I'm old now.”
“Why are you only thinking in one direction?”
“One direction?”
“A few secrets from Room 207 exist in reality? You can't stop there. You have to think about the reverse too.”
The reverse?
“It means some secrets from reality exist in Room 207.”
“...!”
“There probably won't be anything related to human intervention. We must have changed everything with the enormous butterfly effect we caused from Ancient Egypt onward.”
“Things unrelated to people!”
If something was unaffected by the butterfly effect, then what existed in reality also existed in Room 207!
For example, something like a meteor falling from space.
Wasn't the Mirror exactly that sort of thing?
A-ri smiled and slightly opened the bag.
Inside was a miracle.
An ancient treasure the Management Bureau had lost long ago in reality.
“C-can you take this outside? Is there some way-”
--- Thud!
A small thermos soon landed on the table.
“... It's not small enough to fit in a thermos.”
“I'm working on that part.”
Everyone was doing their best in their own place.
If Ga-in was struggling after splitting himself apart to resolve the room, then A-ri and Mi-ro were laying out a plan for reality.
“Oh, Mook-seong.”
“Yeah?”
“Jin Mok-gyeong says he's going to invade Korea soon.”
“Cough! H-hey! Why are you only telling me something that important now-”
“What does it matter? It's not the real Korea.”
“You damned Chinese Communist soldier!”
“I really am with the Chinese Communist Army.”
* * *
- Jin Mok-gyeong
The stench was enough to sting my nose.
I'd spilled countless amounts of blood to climb to this position, yet I still couldn't get used to the smell of blood.
Was this my hypocrisy? Or my last shred of humanity?
There was no way to know.
Fortunately, the long fight was finally beginning to show signs of ending.
“It seems you're the only major Fragment in Korea. What do you think?”
A man hung bleeding from a cross, as if imitating the messiah of a desert religion.
Seo Il-do wore an exhausted expression.
“I only wish to rest now.”
“You want to rest? You don't want to kill me, or regret all your laziness?”
“Well, I've lived diligently in my own way.”
“Ha ha! All you did was open one large church and gather believers. Isn't that truly foolish?”
“Foolish?”
“How many believers do you have? I believe you had fewer than 100,000 even at the very end. Did you think that was enough to contend with me?”
“So what, you're telling me to fill an entire country with my believers? Even if I did, how could I defeat the mad god of the continent?”
The mad god of the continent naturally referred to me.
His words were thorny, but they amused me more than they offended me.
“You're right about that. Seo Il-do, perhaps that is simply the fate of someone born in a small country.”
The moment I took a step closer, Seo Il-do gave a bitter smile.
“You look as though you find it funny.”
“Of course. I would like to offer some advice to His Majesty, the Emperor of a great nation.”
“I'll listen.”
“You are a pig.”
“...”
“A pig mindlessly gobbling up the feed its owner scattered and feeling full. As it happens, you've put on quite a bit of fat.”
“...”
“You may be satisfied with your plump belly, but remember this. When the time comes, a pig's fate is to be slaughtered.”
“I'll remember that.”
--- Crunch!
With that, Korea's largest Fragment came into my hands.
Footnotes:
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