Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 603

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 602: The Stolen World (17)

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「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 228

Current Location: Searching...

Sage’s Advice: 0」

- Han Ga-in

「Rejoice that there is more than one adversary. If there were only one, you could never win. Because there are several, there is an opening.」

My body froze for a moment at the unexpected answer. In that time, the battlefield, filled with transcendent violence, changed rapidly.

Elder Wisdom ultimately failed to evade the Moon's tongue.

「Krrrgh...!」

It wasn't a direct hit.

Had it only grazed the edge of that mass of flesh, larger than a building?

Even that was enough for nearly thirty percent of Elder Wisdom's body to disintegrate into dust in an instant.

If the Moon Demon had been given even a little more leeway, Elder Wisdom would have vanished without a trace, no matter how cunning the schemes accumulated over countless years had been.

The Moon Demon, however, wasn't given that little bit of leeway.

Even a great demon had adversaries worthy of its stature.

--- Crack!

"That's-!"

"The Pillagers!"

White lightning flashed throughout the dark sky, and the air began splitting open in every direction.

Beyond those rifts stood sacred figures it was difficult even to meet the gaze of.

Every one of them was a noble and great being.

Every one of them was also a fallen loser.

"Ah! Th-that-"

Eun-sol's startled voice came from behind me.

She had recognized one of the Pillagers.

Right. Just as Owl told us yesterday, the Pillagers were beings we already knew!

--- Rumble!

It was as though an endlessly massive ship had fired its cannons.

Maybe that was exactly what it was.

Beams of white light fired from all directions struck the Moon's tongue one after another. Before long, chunks of the Moon's flesh began falling all over ruined Seoul.

"Aaaah!"

"That's enough sightseeing. Let's run! Hurry! While the Moon Dem- Prince is protecting us, we need to get out of here!"

As we fled the gods' chaotic battlefield, I suddenly burst out laughing.

"Haha!"

"Y-you can laugh right now?"

Aedia looked dumbfounded, but I couldn't help it.

Wasn't this the perfect example of the hint Owl had given me earlier?

This fight began between Elder Wisdom and us.

Then the Moon, unwilling to lose Aedia and me so pointlessly, was dragged into the battlefield.

Soon after, the Pillagers, unwilling to lose Elder Wisdom, joined in too.

It was the classic case of adults getting dragged into a children's quarrel.

"You don't need power to make a mess."

"What?"

"Let's go!"

* * *

The night sky had grown dark before we knew it.

The great battle high in the distant sky had ended long ago.

"Where are we now?"

I answered Aedia, who was staring blankly into the sky.

"Bucheon."

"That doesn't tell me much. Place names in Korea change often throughout the repeating Loops."

"...You know Incheon, right? We're near there."

"We've come close to the Sacred Domain. I don't know when we'll arrive, though."

"..."

Our destination was the waters off Incheon.

Normally, traveling from Seoul to Incheon, not even all the way to America, would have gotten us there long ago.

"I'm tired. I don't know how many Otherworlds we've been dragged through in just a few hours..."

These grotesque Otherworlds were phenomena created by the Pillagers' Encroachment.

Every time we took a step, our location changed to Searching..., and some bizarre place appeared.

Because of that, there were plenty of times when we moved only thirty meters in an hour.

"I can feel the malice. It feels like they're causing Encroachment along every route we take."

"Of course. Thanks to Elder Wisdom, the Pillagers have begun taking notice of us too."

"..."

"We should rest here. See that house over there? Let's sleep for a bit and leave in the morning."

"Sleep? Is that possible?"

What if the inside of the house turned into an Otherworld while we slept?

"It'll be fine here. This area is strongly touched by the Moon's power."

"..."

A place where the Moon's power was strong...

I had no idea what that meant, but I'd accept it for now.

The moment we entered a shabby house near Bucheon, my companions began collapsing one after another.

The aftereffects of Elder Wisdom's absurd attack.

The clash that followed in the incomprehensible domains of the Great Ones.

As if that wasn't enough, there was the grotesqueness of the Otherworlds placed by the Pillagers.

The pressure was too much for a human to endure. Everyone was exhausted in both body and mind.

"Jin-cheol, how's Eun-sol?"

"She's been unconscious for a while."

At least Jin-cheol seemed to be holding up.

His body was tough to begin with, and Eun-sol must have used the Flute beside him to ease the mental strain.

"Is A-ri okay?"

"We can only hope so."

The moment someone mentioned resting, A-ri fell asleep as though she had passed out.

I remembered A-ri laughing like mad while staring straight at the Moon, and my heart felt heavy.

"...What is she looking at?"

"Her? Aedia?"

Aedia was leaning against the window with a dazed expression, looking at the sky.

Following her gaze, I saw a faint sphere glowing crimson.

The Moon's distant form had finally begun manifesting in reality.

"...Aedia."

"Yes."

"What exactly is at the Sacred Domain in the waters off Incheon?"

"A measure that can drive away the Pillagers!"

That was why Aedia was leading us to the Sacred Domain.

"Holy Son, I think you should sleep too."

"What about you?"

"I'm fine. Someone has to stand watch. Besides, this is the power of my Inheritance."

Aedia smiled brightly. Parts of her body had transformed into violet rock.

Were her wounds turning into rock before returning to flesh and healing?

That Inheritance seemed to be the source of the Holy Mother's formidable physical abilities.

"What's it called?"

"The Qliphoth Crystal. An Inheritance no human can wield."

"..."

"Isn't it strange? An Inheritance the human body can't endure ended up in my hands."

Aedia didn't seem interested in hiding that she wasn't human.

"I always wonder, you know. The things you and I went through in our respective Hotels. Did they really unfold according to our will?"

"..."

"Perhaps what Blessings and Inheritances you and I would obtain was decided from the very beginning-"

"My companions received Inheritances that were difficult for humans to endure too."

Jin-cheol received the Otherworldly Star, which made his body collapse.

Elena received Ominous Imagination, which shattered her mind.

"When they first got them, we wondered how they could ever use them. Then, right after that, we went to the Sanctuary of Blessings, and they were somehow able to use them."

Jin-cheol gained Regeneration.

Elena gained Clear Mirror, Still Water.

"Your Inheritance, the Qliphoth Crystal, was probably similar."

"If a human had received it, they would have been made capable of using it through a Blessing enhancement right afterward?"

"Yes."

"That could be true."

That was my interpretation.

Aedia didn't seem inclined to argue.

"Let's stop talking about the Hotel. You told us to focus on what's in front of us, didn't you?"

"Do you know why I said that? Because I couldn't even protect myself. It was advice, and a vow."

"I had only been half-sure about the Pillagers' identity before, but now I know. A being Eun-sol met once showed up again."

"I see."

"The Pillagers are Arks too, right? Other Arks?"

We had already encountered the Pillagers twice.

The being Eun-sol encountered after she was dragged into an Otherworld at Esper's dock.

A pale mass of light that appeared alongside a gigantic whirlpool.

The place where A-ri stayed after fleeing the Stone Tablet's punishment.

A creature beyond imagination in size, a witless god that had been abandoned and fallen until it lost even its intellect.

"A-ri called them old Arks. They had an accident during the dismantling or creation process..."

"That isn't wrong, but it leaves out many important parts."

"Then fill them in."

Aedia looked up at the dark night sky again and murmured.

"I originally planned to tell you the important details once we reached the Sacred Domain. I didn't want to draw Elder Wisdom's attention."

"..."

"That has no meaning now. We've already fought once."

I took a deep breath and focused on Aedia's words.

"Holy Son, do you know? They say the First Ark was created after researching Regressors."

"...I heard that."

It was what Dominion told Mi-ro.

"Regressors have one strange characteristic. They can't control when they Awaken."

Regressors couldn't control when they Awakened.

Some woke in the Middle Ages, while others woke in the twenty-first century.

There may even have been people who woke in prehistoric times.

"Arks are the same. They can't precisely control when they arrive."

"..."

"No one knows the exact reason. To begin with, no one clearly understands the principles of the Ark."

The Ark's two core components were the Soul Convergence Circuit and the Mirror.

The Mirror was quite literally an unidentified object that had fallen from space. Based on what we learned in Room 207, it was a sacred relic containing the Practitioner's authority.

The Soul Convergence Circuit was likewise something no one understood.

"Miss A-ri, asleep on the sofa, probably knows this, but..."

"Just call me A-ri."

A-ri had apparently woken up because Aedia was talking about something important.

"If you think it over, an Ark is essentially an invasion from a past Loop into the next Loop."

"..."

"If it arrives around the fifth or eighth century, there is no major problem. To us, the humans of those eras are not much different from primitive people."

"..."

"They don't know what an Ark is. They simply bow their heads, saying that Divine Humans descended from the sky. Since they serve willingly, the Ark faction has no reason to fight the natives."

A-ri continued from there.

"The Ark side also feels a sense of duty. We'll enlighten the savages of this primitive world and lead them into the light! They also put people like that aboard an Ark to begin with."

There was no great problem when an Ark arrived in a premodern world.

The natives of that era couldn't understand the concept of an Ark, and they had no ability to resist it in the first place.

They naturally mingled together, and in that process...

The Corruption contained within the Ark spread throughout the world.

"What happens if it arrives in the twenty-first century?"

"..."

"Holy Son, imagine an Ark from the old world arrived around the end of last year. Do you think the Management Bureau would meekly accept their rule?"

"A fight... would break out."

"If the Ark faction wins, the native factions are wiped out completely. The Holy See and the Order of Reason disappear into history, and the Regressors' memories are forcibly altered to erase the history of the conflict. Even so, the few who remember..."

"Is that Elder Wisdom's faction? What if the native faction wins?"

"The Ark runs away. Ah, it's impossible to settle in this Loop. Let's go to the next Loop."

That was when I saw the problem.

"...Wouldn't the natives make an Ark too when their world was about to end?"

"Oh my! Now there are two Arks? But there's only one next world!"

"..."

"Do you think something like this only happened once? There are countless possible variations."

"..."

"The example I just gave was an intact Ark arriving too far in the future. In other cases, the Ark might have been defective from the start."

A-ri murmured quietly.

"The place where I stayed while avoiding the Stone Tablet. That thing was an Ark that broke after its survival instinct ran wild during the dismantling process."

"Those ones, too, follow their instincts as Arks into the next Loop when their world is about to end."

One Ark arrived too far in the future and was driven away by native factions.

One Ark malfunctioned during the dismantling process and became like a fallen god.

Another Ark...

As this process repeated endlessly, more than ten Arks had come to drift through space and time!

--- Clack!

Aedia approached the table with a gloomy expression and removed every chair except one.

"In short, this fight is a game of musical chairs."

"..."

"There are more than ten Arks looking for a chair, meaning a functioning world..."

"There's only one chair."

"...That's the problem."