WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 563: A World That Cannot Be Remembered (2)

──────

- Han Ga-in

Looking back, Grandpa had hardly talked about the Management Bureau while we were in the Hotel.

Whenever I wanted information about the Management Bureau, I pressed A-ri for answers, not Grandpa.

Still, Grandpa Mook-seong had served the Management Bureau for far longer than I could have imagined.

That meant he knew quite a few secrets too.

This conversation was proof of that.

“So, while you were traveling around doing exorcist-like work, you found a place where the location information came out strange?”

“That’s right.”

“Hearing that reminds me of something. Ga-in, have you ever wondered about this?”

Before any question, a thought came to mind.

Come to think of it, the biological age gap between Grandpa and me had stopped meaning anything a long time ago.

If you added up all the time in Room 203, I might even be older.

Of course, Grandpa had also turned out to be a Regressor, so maybe not. Still, it was clear that neither Grandpa nor I looked our real age.

Even so, I naturally treated Grandpa as my elder, and he treated me as the younger one.

Then again, if I started picking at things like that, it was also strange that I’d spoken casually to A-ri from the beginning while using honorifics with Grandpa, who was obviously younger than A-ri.

“What kind of place do you think the ‘other worlds’ that appear in all sorts of urban legends and ghost stories are?”

Urban legends, ghost stories, myths.

Humans had imagined other worlds since ancient times.

On a grand scale, there were Heaven and Hell. The Peach Blossom Spring from Chinese folklore was another good example.

Modern ghost stories had tales of people operating elevators in peculiar ways and arriving in another world.

Some of those supernatural phenomena really existed.

“Otherworlds that sound like something out of ghost stories exist. When you think about it, Hotel Pioneer is a kind of Otherworld too.”

“That makes sense.”

“How they come into being, how to create them, we... Ah, not anymore. The Management Bureau doesn’t know either. Still, the Management Bureau has succeeded in learning how to use a few Otherworlds.”

“How to use Otherworlds?”

“They can be quite useful if you know how. For example, what if you threw a monster that was difficult to deal with into an Otherworld and shut the entrance?”

“... I’ve seen something like that once.”

“You have?”

“In Room 202, The Little Mermaid, A-ri and I went to a place where a terrible monster had been sealed.”

It had been for the purpose of sealing a Chaos Entity.

“Are there other uses?”

“Storage.”

“Excuse me?”

“Have you ever thought about how the Management Bureau stores information through repeated Loops?”

“Ah.”

“A very small number of agents can preserve their sense of self when they regress, but computers can’t.”

Now that he mentioned it, that was true.

Managing the world required an enormous amount of information, but there was no way data storage devices would remain after a Loop.

“Are the agents’ memories not enough?”

“Pfft! Kid, how many agents do you think there are on the entire planet?”

“I don’t know.”

“To be honest, I don’t know exactly either.”

“...”

“More than a hundred, less than a thousand. That’s what the circumstances suggest.”

“That’s a pretty broad range.”

“Sorry. My rank wasn’t high enough. A-ri might know more precisely.”

A-ri had apparently been just about to be promoted to the highest rank, while Grandpa hadn’t reached that level.

“Whether it’s a hundred or a thousand, you know how limited human memory is, right? In terms of sheer information, even all the memories of a thousand people combined wouldn’t hold as much as a single smartphone.”

A USB drive the size of a fingernail could hold thousands of textbooks. He was right.

That was it.

Agents’ memories alone couldn’t accumulate enough information to manage an entire civilization.

The Management Bureau needed a special place to preserve information, whether in books or computers.

I learned that Otherworlds straight out of ghost stories really existed, and that the Management Bureau had secured some of them for various purposes.

“The place I want to go with you now is one of those Otherworlds. A place the Management Bureau failed to secure!”

The World That Cannot Be Remembered.

It was one of the Otherworlds beyond the Management Bureau’s control, with an entrance said to be near Seoraksan.

“If it were just an ordinary hellscape full of monsters, they would’ve simply controlled the entrance.”

“Could ‘ordinary’ and ‘full of monsters’ really go together...?”

“This place wasn’t like that. Quite a few employees and agents who infiltrated it returned unharmed. There weren’t even any signs of combat.”

It wasn’t a place where absurd monsters attacked the moment you entered.

“The problem was that not only the employees, but even the agents couldn’t remember what they experienced inside.”

“So that’s why it’s called The World That Cannot Be Remembered.”

“Right. We... I keep doing that. The Management Bureau wanted to know its secrets.”

“That’s understandable.”

“So they sent an agent with powerful mental defenses.”

“Like Eun-sol, with the Flute?”

“Similar, but far weaker. Treasures on the Flute’s level are rare.”

“Did that person lose their memories too?”

“Mostly.”

Mostly and completely were different.

Maybe they had managed to remember some of it.

“What did they say?”

“They remembered only one sentence. There is a possibility of Salvation here.”

“...”

Salvation.

A mysterious word, but also an unsettling one.

I had heard talk of saving humanity many times in the Hotel, but it had never once been proper Salvation.

“That’s all. They sent people in several more times afterward, but eventually even those who returned alive became rare.”

“Hmm...”

“At some point, the Management Bureau gave up too. There are more than one or two mysterious and bizarre places in this world. They can’t obsess over just one of them.”

Would going to a place like that help?

...

What we were going to do was also stop a coming crisis of destruction.

There had to be meaning in examining a place with a possibility of Salvation.

--- Thunk!

Grandpa gave my shoulder a light pat.

“It was something from over thirty years ago, so I’d forgotten it too. But hearing you talk about Otherworlds naturally brought it back to mind.”

“... Because of the Status Window.”

“You brought the pen, right?”

“Yes.”

The Anywhere-Writing Pen and the Status Window.

Combined, they created an invincible notepad that not even a Prisoner could edit.

Even if my memories disappeared, the record would remain.

* * *

「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 37

Current Location: Taebaek City, Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province

Sage’s Advice: 3」

- Han Ga-in

Grandpa hadn’t lied when he said it was a place the Management Bureau had abandoned.

They hadn’t even stationed armed personnel around the entrance to the Otherworld. All they had done was put up a barbed-wire fence marked ‘No Entry.’

“Isn’t the security too lax?”

“Usually, if you put up a barbed-wire fence like that, ordinary people don’t go anywhere near it.”

That wasn’t wrong, but it still looked lax.

“Do you think there are only one or two strange places in the world? They don’t even have enough people to station at the pond that spits out man-eating monsters every day at noon.”

“...”

“It’s not like there’s no security. The security system is still running.”

That left me with nothing to say.

If we were talking priorities, they should block off the pond where man-eating monsters appeared every day.

After walking beyond the barbed-wire fence, we came across a shabby cabin.

“It’s very old. Was it built as camouflage?”

“Yeah. It’s old not because of camouflage, but because nobody maintained it.”

“...”

“Stay still. There are security sensors all over the place.”

It took Grandpa only thirty minutes to dismantle the Management Bureau’s security system.

It struck me again that the Management Bureau probably hadn’t imagined their own installations being dismantled by a former agent.

Then we stopped at the cabin entrance.

“I do feel a little uneasy about going in.”

“Didn’t you say most people came out without anything happening?”

“We can’t know if the same will happen to us.”

“...”

“If we don’t come out for a long time, A-ri will come rescue us. A-ri has the Kingdom of Dreams.”

“Stop saying unsettling things and let’s go in.”

--- Click!

I gripped the door and paused for a moment.

If it was dangerous the moment we opened it, wouldn’t a warning appear?

“Hey! You told me to stop saying unsettling things, and now you’re doing this?”

“... I’m opening it.”

* * *

「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 37

Current Location: Searching...

Sage’s Advice: 3」

The first thing I noticed was a space filled with gray.

Grandpa and I were trapped in a stifling room with no visible entrance or exit.

As we searched for a way out, the Chat Window blinked for the first time in a long while.

“The ceiling! The ceiling!”

The moment I looked up, I understood why Grandpa’s eyes had gone wide.

“That’s...!”

A Mirror!

It was a Mirror!

In Room 207, the so-called mock exam had revealed that the Mirror was a major cause of the Light That Calls the End. I’d assumed one existed in reality too.

But it was here?

The Mirror in reality was outside the Management Bureau’s control?

Or did the Management Bureau possess a large piece while fragments also existed outside its control?

Just as my thoughts began to grow confused, the long-dormant Chat Window blinked again.

A guest has come from afar.

The Chat Window, even though Grandpa was right beside me?

As I froze in confusion, I heard Grandpa’s urgent voice.

“It’s not me!”

Only then did I widen my eyes and check who the ‘speaker’ was. As if it had been waiting, a blurry image appeared.

Searching: It is regrettable that I was not prepared to receive guests. Still, I trust you will understand, since you came without informing me in advance.

“This is...!”

Communication.

Someone other than Grandpa, another owner of Communication, was here!

Searching: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. In my home, I ask that you follow the rules I have established.

Follow their own rules? What was that supposed to-

--- Bzzzt...!

The next moment, an eerie sensation like something scraping through my mind came over me, along with an incomprehensible force.

If I had known nothing, I might have wondered what it was.

But I had come here after hearing about the nature of The World That Cannot Be Remembered, so I understood at once.

It was trying to manipulate Grandpa’s memories and mine!

The Status Window’s mental protection wasn’t enough to withstand the attack.

I immediately summoned the Grimoire.

Wasn’t that exactly why I had absorbed Serena’s Enlightenment?

--- Flutter!

I, my mind, my soul, condensed into a single point.

The moment Serena’s Enlightenment, the ‘Ultimate Self,’ tried to protect my mind, Danger Alert activated.

「Advice: 3 -> 0」

「Accept the interference. In the greater picture, doing so will benefit you.」

“...”

Advice telling me not to resist.

Until now, I would have followed it without hesitating for even a second, but...

For the first time, a thought came to me.

The ruler of The World That Cannot Be Remembered was a Former Participant and the owner of the blessing, Communication.

I didn’t know whether it was an Inheritance or a blessing, but that person seemed to possess an ability to manipulate memories that Grandpa didn’t have.

Would the Owl still advise me ‘for my sake’ in a situation where I was in conflict with another participant?

“...”

Trust it.

This time, I thought I could trust it.

Because the other side was the owner of Communication, not Wisdom, the Owl would likely take my side as well.

Then if the other side were another owner of Wisdom, whose side would the Owl take?

Grandpa muttered as if lamenting.

“Ha...! To think Communication had this kind of potential too!”

...

Some blessings only showed their true potential when acquired by someone with a vicious heart.

Just before my consciousness crumbled, I left my first record.

「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

My memories manipulated

Be suspicious

Sage’s Advice: 0」

Footnotes:

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