WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 543: Room 207, Gate Room - Fourth Trial ‘The Fallen King’ (29)
──────
- Serena K Wilde
A California beach beneath the warm sun.
As I walked over the soft sand with an empty heart, I heard someone's voice.
“Aha! There you are.”
How should I put it? I just knew the moment I saw them.
A Fragment.
And a very large one at that.
It was surprising that such a large Fragment remained at this point.
“Who are you?”
“I'm First.”
First?
What a strange name.
“My apologies. Until last week, I was Third.”
“...”
“But First died, and somehow, his Fragment ended up in my hands. Thanks to that, I became First again.”
There was a story hidden beneath those joking words.
He had originally been the third-largest Fragment, but after acquiring Jin Mok-gyeong's Fragment, he had become the largest.
He seemed to be an associate of the mysterious woman who had been Jin Mok-gyeong's secretary.
Maybe today was the day I died.
I'd thought a day like this would come eventually, but it had arrived sooner than expected.
“You don't seem surprised. Have you gathered so many Fragments that you can read fate now?”
“...”
“Judging by your expression, that's not it. It seems you've been lamenting your own pitiful state, like an insect caught in a spiderweb, and drifting through life without caring what happens.”
“That was a bit much.”
He spoke as though he were deliberately trying to provoke me.
I probably would've gotten angry in the past, but now, I could let it slide.
It wasn't exactly wrong, either.
“Did you come alone?”
“Hm? Ah! You think I'm one of Miss A-ri's associates?”
“...”
“I'm alone. She's not nearby. Not yet.”
“You sound confident.”
I wouldn't die easily.
“Not at all. My ability has little to do with combat.”
“What?”
“Miss Serena. I came here intending to die by your hand.”
For a moment, I couldn't understand what he was saying.
“What?”
“This is my role. To put a fitting full stop to the Fragments' battle when it nears its end. Thinking about it now, I believe dying by your hand would make an excellent full stop.”
This was getting more and more absurd.
His role was to put a fitting full stop to our battle when it ended?
What the hell was he talking about?
Then the man suddenly tilted his head.
“Aha!”
“... What?”
“I think I understand why Ga-in let you live.”
“What?”
“You've spent the last few months alone and taken another step forward, haven't you?”
“...”
“Devour me. Then I hope you fight well in the final battle you've been awaiting.”
I reached out to retrieve his Fragment.
Just before my hand touched his forehead, he spoke one last time.
“Oh, and there's a letter in my pocket. I hope you'll read it.”
--- Crunch!
The final, largest Fragment came into my hands.
* * *
The letter I unfolded, thinking I'd at least hear his last words, was longer than expected.
「On the day the storm raged, I rose from bed and realized that I had become the Great One's tool.」
He had obtained the largest Fragment of all.
Thanks to that, he gained a powerful ability from the very beginning, ‘the power to see fate.’
And that power showed him a miserable fate.
「I deliberately did not give myself a name. Someone needed a way to refer to me, so I simply chose a number.」
After accepting his fate, he lived in Florida with an old man named Mook-seong.
At first, the old man was wary of him and revealed no information, but five years was longer than one might think.
「There is something called the ‘Mirror.’ It is the cause of our birth and the Great One's greatest challenge.」
The Great One's challenge.
「Grandpa described the Great One splitting himself as ‘a means of resolving the trial.’ Miss A-ri seems to think so as well.」
Ga-in's companions saw his reason for splitting himself as being ‘to resolve the trial.’
「I believe there was one more purpose. Growth!」
Han Ga-in's hidden purpose, growth.
「To understand this, you must understand the Mirror.」
The Mirror created two major phenomena, ‘Transformation’ and ‘Division.’
‘Transformation’ twisted the original and, after reassembling it, made it into something stronger.
‘Division’ split the original into countless pieces and scattered them throughout the world.
The former might have been a power, but the latter looked more like a curse.
「I divided them only for the sake of explanation. They are not separate powers. After all, both Transformation and Division happened to us.」
If Han Ga-in's goal was growth, did that mean he would overcome the curse of ‘Division’ and gain the enhancement of ‘Transformation’?
A question suddenly came to mind.
Transformation was supposed to grant greater power, but had we ever gained power beyond that of the original?
“That’s right.”
Aah!
I-I panicked!
I'd been quietly reading the letter. Who had answered that?
The moment I tried to lift my head in surprise to look around, my neck wouldn't move.
Then my eyes moved ‘on their own’ and read the letter's next passage.
「Would you like to know one interesting fact? I heard this from Grandpa, but Miss A-ri underwent ‘Division.’ Her Fragments were split apart and scattered throughout the world.」
“That’s right. A-ri underwent Division before I did.”
The answer came again.
Now I knew where this ‘voice’ was coming from.
「Every person who acquired one of Miss A-ri's Fragments gained part of her memories or personality. Some even called themselves ‘Kim A-ri.’」
I was afraid.
「Why didn't that happen to us? Haha! No, no!」
The next sentence came dimly into view. Even without reading it, I could predict what it would say...
I was terrified.
「Don't give me that shit! You bastard, Han Ga-in, you've already awakened! You finished reassembling yourself behind our backs, then waited until the fight was over, didn't you, sir? Did you enjoy it?」
Fierce rage and crude insults.
Then suddenly, polite speech.
The words conveyed the writer's storm of emotions.
--- Snap!
The letter folded.
Someone other than me controlled my body.
‘He’ began walking slowly along the beach.
“It wasn't enjoyable. It was difficult and painful. Countless memories of death came rushing in.”
Soon, he stepped into the seawater and looked at himself in the rippling waves.
The water wasn't still, so my beautiful face, Serena K Wilde's face, warped like an illusion.
Just like me, fading away in real time without even a trace...
“Calling your own face beautiful. You have an amusing personality. Ah, that question you asked earlier. I'll answer it.”
The question I asked?
“You asked whether any of you had ever gained power beyond mine. At least you did. Jin Mok-gyeong failed, though.”
Jin Mok-gyeong failed, but I succeeded?
It made no sense.
Jin Mok-gyeong had been far stronger than me.
“He was strong because he had gathered more Fragments. He never crossed the wall until the very end. To put it in the terms of a martial arts novel, he had a lot of inner strength but lacked Enlightenment.”
I couldn't understand what he was saying.
“Until his final moment, he couldn't accept the path he was walking. He was trapped in the illusion of atheism he had created for himself. A-ri pointed it out several times. It would've been nice if he had accepted her advice.”
...
“You're different. You must have gained a power similar to the Book of the Avatar, but you learned a completely different way to use it from mine.”
The method Serena K Wilde had learned, different from that of the original.
Another possibility.
“Possession and Avatar. I thought the nature of those powers made the self inevitably faint and broad. The British prince was the extreme of that path. You gathered into a single point instead.”
...
“The effect is strong resistance against mental attacks? Priority over control of the body? So that's why the British prince lost to you. The side effect is... the loss of your Possession ability. That's why you couldn't leave this girl's body.”
I had never explained it to him, nor had I ever recorded my Enlightenment anywhere.
Yet this man understood everything I had built up.
As if he had been waiting for this moment.
“The Unborn One created the Book of the Avatar to escape the fate of a cursed larva. With that purpose in mind, the moment you lost the ability of Possession, your path veered into the mountains.”
My Enlightenment diverged from the Grimoire's original purpose.
That was why it was an Enlightenment Han Ga-in could not reach on his own.
“But that mountain is very high. Not bad. Thank you.”
I couldn't resist at all.
Even though he had directly admitted that my Enlightenment was superior to his in some ways, I couldn't control my body.
“Try to understand. I prepared for a long time too.”
I was reflected in the rippling seawater.
He reached out to me, Han Ga-in reaching out to Serena K Wilde.
“So, child, will you teach me what you've realized as well?”
In the depths of despair, my final resistance left a trace.
“I-I am myself forever! I can never become part of you-”
A huge hand seized me.
“Now you are me.”
That was my final memory, Serena K Wilde's final memory.
* * *
「User: Han ?-in (?sdom)
Date: Day 1,872
Current Location: California, Santa Monica Beach
Guidance: ∞」
- ?
“Ugh...! That startled me!”
That had been quite dangerous.
I'd done quite a bit of preparation to devour Serena in one stroke, so I hadn't been too worried.
Yet at the last moment, Serena's sheer individual skill had nearly taken control of the body from me.
Even now, I thought she had been an exceptionally talented girl.
That was enough thought for Serena.
“Serena, First. You both worked hard. I won't say I'm sorry.”
There was no need to apologize.
They were part of me now.
Would anyone apologize to their own right arm?
“... Is it over now?”
“It's over.”
A familiar voice.
When I turned around, A-ri was ‘carrying’ a wheelchair toward me.
“You're strong.”
“There’s too much sand, so the wheels won't move well. Here, say hello to each other. It's the historic reunion of Ga-in and Ga-in.”
A being that could no longer even focus its eyes properly, because neither soul, self, nor anything else remained.
‘Han Ga-in.’
“Here. A handgun.”
“...”
My mind went blank.
I'd expected this moment to come one day...
But now that it was here, my hand wouldn't move.
I looked at the Status Window again.
「User: Han ?-in (?sdom)
Date: Day 1,872
Current Location: California, Santa Monica Beach
Guidance: ∞」
Come to think of it, it was strange that I could see a Status Window in the first place.
Blessings were granted based on the body, so normally, I shouldn't be able to see it while in another body.
It meant this was a twisted Blessing.
Its contents were strange as well.
Question marks had appeared everywhere, and everything from the date to the current location differed completely from the original.
It even said Guidance instead of Advice.
The number of times I could use Guidance was infinity.
Yaldabaoth beyond the Mirror seemed to have more energy and spare time than the Owl, didn't it?
This change.
This distortion.
Clear proof that I was no longer pure.
Long ago, my double had tried to prevent the Twisted One from winning in this situation. He believed that was how he could achieve ultimate victory.
What about ‘that’ one?
It couldn't be completely identical to before it saw the Mirror, since it had been split by the Mirror...
Still, at least its body remained as it had been originally, so it was less twisted than I was now.
Perhaps sensing my hesitation, A-ri added one more thing.
“... This is a note First wrote this morning.”
“Another letter?”
A line was written on the small note.
「You lost the coin toss. Will you accept great Enlightenment?」
At that moment, I saw something flash at the edge of my vision.
「Guidance: ∞!」
「Guidance: ∞!」
「Guidance: ∞!」
“Ha!”
“What is it?”
“This bullshit at the very end!”
Footnotes:
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