WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 559: The Secret of the Esper 2 (4)
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「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 27
Current Location: Esper
Sage’s Advice: 1」
- Han Ga-in
After securing the one wearing the Crown of Thorns, the situation aboard the Esper quickly began to stabilize.
The difference in efficiency was enormous. I would have had to fight and subdue them one by one, while the self-proclaimed Jesus could call them over with a single word, calm them down, and remove their masks.
Of course, there were casualties no matter how quickly we acted.
Quite a few of the masked people had already committed atrocities too horrific to put into words.
There had been no direct casualties at Hotel Delight, so we could more or less let it slide. The Esper incident was different.
Once the ship reached port, wouldn't all kinds of organizations get involved, whether it was the police or the Management Bureau?
“...”
I'd think about that later.
Something else had been bothering me for a while.
“You are all sinners. In the first world, before everything began, humanity committed an unforgivable sin!”
His sermon was getting stranger.
Perhaps because of that, the reactions of the people seated in the theater were changing in an ominous way.
Their eyes were bloodshot, and their whole bodies trembled.
It was the same for ordinary people without masks and those still wearing them, half-transformed into Chaos Entities.
None of them could resist the power of the Crown of Thorns.
Taking advantage of that, I moved around and removed masks.
“What must be done? Child, what must be done?”
The child he questioned opened wide eyes and answered.
“Uh, um... Since we did wrong, shouldn't we apologize?”
A childlike answer.
“Ha! Apologize? That's nowhere near enough! How could you claim to have atoned with that? Christ said this: Sinner, eternal sinner! Repent. Admit your sins and atone.”
“I-I'll repent and atone.”
“That's right, isn't it? You all must repent, right? But words alone won't be enough, will they? What must you do?”
People gradually began gasping for breath.
I was starting to understand what kind of “atonement” that bastard meant.
I'd removed most of the masks, and it was about time to subdue the cult leader too, so I stood.
--- Bang!
“Oh? Student, are you a student? You too, uh, received a revelation from the Great One, didn't you?”
Was that how he interpreted the power of the Sacred Sun I'd shown earlier?
It didn't matter.
“Pastor, then how do we repent?”
His mouth stretched sideways as if it would tear apart.
A grotesquely twisted smile.
“The ugly life of a sinner. You must offer all of it... Urk!”
I knew instinctively.
It would be bad if he finished that sentence!
I immediately pulled out the Book of the Avatar and tried to subdue the cult leader.
In a moment when the screen seemed frozen, the Grimoire's power touched the mad cult leader's body.
The instant it made contact, I realized it.
I could subdue him.
I could seize control of his body.
But I also knew that any further contact could be dangerous!
--- Crackle!
“Urk! W-What are you doing? The Father...”
I didn't need to hear it.
This idiot was an ordinary human who had merely happened to put on the Crown of Thorns.
He was nothing more than a Host I could subdue easily.
But the Crown of Thorns he was wearing...
“...”
Should I take the risk and try to subdue him with the Grimoire?
Or should I use a little more of the Sacred Sun's power?
As I hesitated, I realized Elena had appeared behind me.
At the same time, I figured out an easy way to resolve this situation.
“Aaagh!”
I gasped and screamed as though I were in terrible pain.
Anyone watching would have thought some evil demon was about to tear me apart and kill me!
I even dropped to one knee and bit my lip until it bled.
Then the response I had hoped for came.
--- Buzzz!
An intense resonance pressed against my skin, making it tingle.
Elena spotted me in danger and activated Justice's blessing!
--- Crunch!
One blow was all it took to end things.
The moment a golden wave struck the cult leader, all that remained in his place was a streak of blood.
* * *
“Mr. Ga-in.”
“Yes?”
“That was acting just now, wasn't it?”
“...”
“Even allowing for Justice's power, he was an enemy who died from a single hit. It doesn't make sense for you to scream like that.”
I didn't want to deceive her over something like this, so I honestly nodded.
Fortunately, Elena didn't get angry.
“Oh dear, oh dear! What do we do... I ended up killing him. He was quite a famous social media star.”
A social media star? She seemed to mean the Host who had worn the Crown of Thorns.
“Phew... We can't pretend nothing happened now. So many people died that the Management Bureau will probably come.”
Come to think of it, the man Elena had just turned into bloody pulp was only a victim controlled by the Crown of Thorns.
Elena must have known that too, yet she didn't seem to feel any guilt.
She was only worried about the fallout to come.
“...”
It wasn't anything new.
I couldn't say much about Elena when I'd used her power without hesitation because dealing with him myself would have been a headache.
More importantly, I spotted something on the Host's mangled body.
“Eek! What are you doing?”
“This is intact.”
The Crown of Thorns.
An artifact that could enthrall not only humans, but even Chaos Entities.
“...”
For a moment, I felt a strong temptation.
Since I was currently holding back on using the Sacred Sun, the Crown of Thorns might serve as a substitute of sorts.
“Did you prepare this, Elena?”
“No. This barely even counts as a mask, does it? Besides, wearing a Crown of Thorns and impersonating Jesus is a very sensitive matter...”
Unlike the other masks, the Crown of Thorns hadn't been prepared by Elena.
Someone unknown had prepared it.
Which meant...
Only the Crown of Thorns was real.
The other masks were nothing more than temporary phenomena created by the Crown of Thorns.
“Are you going to wear it, Mr. Ga-in?”
“... I'm considering it.”
The cult leader Elena had killed hadn't seemed like a social media star until the moment he died.
He had lost most of himself to the Crown of Thorns.
Could I endure it?
“...”
That ominous instinct I'd felt when I touched the Crown of Thorns while trying to subdue the cult leader with the Book of the Avatar.
This thing was far more dangerous than it looked.
There were no second chances in reality, so I had to avoid acting rashly.
Even if there was only a one percent chance I couldn't control the Crown of Thorns, blindly trying it without any preparation would be incredibly foolish.
Wouldn't it be better to meet up with Eun-sol and have the Flute ready before trying it?
I needed to think about it some more.
“Elena, it looks like the chaos has mostly settled down. Now, the sailors...”
“I already gathered the staff and was checking on them.”
Elena said that after I stopped her, she had put all the masks into storage.
Yet while we were having our meeting, many passengers and sailors had run wild wearing masks.
Unless the masks had flown out on their own, someone had distributed them.
There was a high chance the culprit was a cruise ship sailor or employee.
“Let's go. We'll find the culprit and find out what their goal was.”
The moment I slipped the mask into my pocket, I heard an inexplicable voice.
‘Remember Original Sin.’
“Original Sin?”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
* * *
Writhing snakes crawled across the ceiling. The carpet fluttered like a living creature and grabbed at the employees' ankles.
Add walls that suddenly ran with blood, and it looked exactly like a scene from a horror movie.
Naturally, the sailors were too terrified to breathe loudly.
Elena was pressuring them with Ominous Imagination.
“Gasp!”
“Don't try to deceive us.”
“Ma'am! We truly don't know anything!”
“Hm...”
For over thirty minutes, we interrogated them while also using Elena's Lie Detection ability.
As a result, we learned that the employees had scattered masks through the cabins on someone's instructions.
The problem was that they didn't know who that someone was.
“I-I truly don't know! Someone gave us instructions, and I thought I obviously had to follow them...”
They had followed the instructions because they thought they obviously had to, yet they didn't know who had given the order.
Elena looked at me as if asking what we should do.
“...”
Leaving the cleanup to the Management Bureau was one option.
They would be better at handling this kind of problem than us, and later we could contact A-ri to find out the truth behind what had happened on the ship.
“Everyone, please listen to me for a moment.”
* * *
“Around noon? That's what I remember. Back then, I was walking through the passage beneath the deck...”
“Don't stop. Recreate exactly what you did then, as much as you remember.”
“A-All right.”
After returning to reality, I realized a strange fact.
The blessings had weakened.
This applied not just to me, but to all my companions.
At first glance, it seemed like a balancing measure typical of the Hotel, but that didn't make sense.
Why would the Hotel care about the balance of reality outside it?
The Owl's answer on this had also been somewhat suspicious.
It seemed there was a more fundamental reason behind the blessings weakening, not something as simple as balance adjustment...
Either way, I was adapting to my weakened blessing.
“Is that enough?”
“John, you're done. Next person, David? You said you sent the wolf mask to a fifth-floor cabin, right?”
“I-I'm sorry. I didn't know it was a strange mask...”
“You don't need to apologize. Recreate what you did then as closely as you can remember.”
Unlike before, Insight couldn't easily obtain information from a quick glance.
As I was doing now, I had to make them reenact their actions or investigate for myself.
If I did that...
“...!”
I could see.
I could see it!
“Ga-in, op...”
“Song-i, quiet. I think he can see something.”
A blurred image, like a black-and-white photograph.
Someone walking down a corridor while carrying masks...
This wasn't it.
Instead of looking at possibilities in the future as before, I was trying to see something from the past.
I had to look further back.
Who had given them the masks? Who had given the instructions?
“...”
The image changed as if it were playing in reverse.
It was a meeting room.
Four? Five employees were facing someone.
It was blurry.
Why? Had the employees lost their memories?
A little more, a little more...
“...?”
Was I imagining it?
It felt like our eyes had met just now.
A man with a fairly large build, though not as big as Jin-cheol.
I couldn't make out his facial features.
His lips moved slowly.
Slowly, as if he wanted someone in the future to see.
‘Shouldn't you check your companions' locations?’
“...”
It wasn't my imagination.
The unidentified man Insight had found.
That man had spoken to the future me!
“Ga-in, Ga-in! Can you see something?”
「Companion Location Information(*)
Lee Eun-sol: Searching....」
Footnotes:
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