WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 610: The Stolen World (25)
──────
- Mi-ro
After hearing that Ga-in and I were going to the Moon together, I found myself wondering about something.
The Management Bureau’s Ark had looked like an enormous ship.
It was, um, like a church ship filled with people kneeling in prayer?
What would it be like inside the Moon?
* * *
I passed out twice while we were falling!
As my vision gradually cleared, I realized something.
We had finally arrived somewhere stable.
“Mi-ro, are you okay now?”
“Y-Yeah. I think I’m finally awake...”
I barely managed to sit up and look around.
I was in a neat bedroom.
Waking up in a bedroom felt really strange.
“Is, is this inside the Moon?”
“That’s right.”
“It looks like some fancy hotel.”
“The Holy Mother prepared this place. She told us to make ourselves comfortable while we’re here.”
So this was the house the Holy Mother had prepared for us.
It really did feel like a hotel.
We left the Hotel, entered the Moon, and found another hotel!
Was it because the Holy Mother came from the Hotel too?
No, she had said she came from some school before the Hotel.
She probably gave us a place like this to make us comfortable.
“Mi-ro, are you hungry?”
“A little...”
“Is there anything you want?”
“Waffles?”
“Come this way.”
Ga-in went to the bedroom door, took hold of the knob, and paused.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
--- Bang!
Beyond the door was a warmly lit place that reminded me of the dining room in Room 105. Waffles and coffee sat on the table in the center.
“Wow! How are there waffles here already?”
“Think of it like the Hotel. This dining room will always have whatever food you want.”
Amazing!
It really was just like a hotel.
While we ate waffles and drank coffee, Ga-in handed me a map of the house.
“It’s a map of the mansion. Aedia gave it to us, so familiarize yourself with it.”
“Okay.”
“Mi-ro, don’t leave the house while I’m gone.”
“Got it. Oh, what about the Mirror?”
“It was already gone when I woke up.”
The Moon took it!
“It was something we were going to offer from the start.”
“...”
“According to the Holy Mother, a huge war will break out soon.”
“Between the Pillagers and the Moon?”
“That’s right. The outcome is obvious.”
Even if we did nothing, it was a battle the Moon would win in the end, and we had given the Moon a powerful weapon too.
The Moon would win more easily and more quickly.
“What do we do now?”
“For now, I’ll be going to work soon.”
“Huh?”
Wasn’t going to work something you did at a workplace?
“What kind of job could you possibly have in a place like this?”
“I have one.”
“Then what do I do?”
“Stay here until I come back. And...”
“And?”
Ga-in seemed to think for a moment, then said something strange.
“If someone other than me comes over...”
“C-Can someone else come here? The Holy Mother, maybe?”
“There are a lot of them. Very many.”
Someone other than Ga-in and the Holy Mother.
Just thinking about it made me feel uneasy in a way I couldn’t explain.
“If someone comes, treat them normally.”
“Normally? Like I usually do?”
“Act like an ordinary middle school girl.”
Don’t act like I normally did, but like an ordinary middle school girl?
That was way too hard!
Maybe he saw how confused I was. Ga-in suddenly patted my head.
“Don’t think too deeply about it. Why do you think I brought you here?”
Why Ga-in brought me here.
Fine! I’ll admit it.
I probably wasn’t as incredibly smart as A-ri or Ga-in.
Though I was much more creative than both of them!
Anyway, if he wanted someone logical and meticulous, he wouldn’t have brought me along.
“You brought me here so I wouldn’t think too hard and could act on impulse?”
“That’s right. This is a place even I can’t be sure about.”
“Then I’ll do whatever I want!”
For a moment, Ga-in looked genuinely worried.
“... At least act with basic common sense. You know what an ordinary middle school girl is like, right?”
As our meal came to an end, Ga-in stood up, saying he was off to work.
* * *
「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 240
Current Location: Searching...
Sage’s Advice: 3」
- Han Ga-in
I never thought hearing someone say they would do whatever they wanted could sound so unsettling...
Did I say something unnecessary earlier?
“...”
No.
The more deeply one thought in this place, the more dangerous it became.
In one sense, it was most dangerous for someone like me.
“Whew...”
The inside of the Moon was far too different from what I expected.
I thought it would be something like the Management Bureau’s Ark, an environment resembling a spaceship.
I expected to find the information I wanted by exploring the interior and making contact with the Moon, but...
This place was far more abstract and bizarre.
Where should I go to find the information I wanted?
A library? A lab?
“...”
Holding the doorknob, I imagined it.
The place I wanted to go, and the place I needed to pass through to get there!
--- Rattle!
A dark passage resembling an apartment corridor appeared.
As I walked down the corridor, I thought.
There was no such thing as fixed reality here.
Mi-ro woke up in a place like a Hotel bed because, to her, the bed in Room 105 was a symbol of rest.
A place at the boundary between reality and unreality, where imagination and reality were mixed together.
The closest concept was a dream.
At the end of the corridor stood an elevator, like in so many other hotels and apartment buildings.
* * *
--- Ding!
When the doors opened, a familiar face appeared.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Holy Son, can you hear it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you hear the Prince laughing? His voice, filled with joy, is spreading throughout the world!”
I couldn’t hear anything.
“...”
A thought suddenly occurred to me.
Though the Holy Mother and I were together in the cramped space of an elevator, perhaps we were actually in completely separate realms.
Within the Holy Mother’s perception, the Moon might truly be sending angels down to sing songs of victory.
“I can almost hear it.”
“It’s all thanks to you, Holy Son.”
“... Thank you.”
--- Ding!
The elevator arrived at the first floor.
Just as I was about to step outside, the Holy Mother suddenly grabbed my clothes.
“It’s dangerous.”
“Pardon?”
“You left the house and entered an apartment corridor. At the end of the corridor was an elevator. You operated the panel and came down to the first floor.”
She was listing the realms, or imaginations, I had passed through.
“If this continues, outside the elevator is the first floor of an apartment building. Once you leave the main entrance, you’ll be outdoors?”
“That’s right.”
“You were planning to pass through an outdoor area to reach your destination?”
“Yes.”
“That’s extremely dangerous.”
“... I’ll heed your advice.”
This place was a dream world created by the Moon.
Even I didn’t know exactly which actions were dangerous.
It was a realm I had never visited before, one where even Insight couldn’t find a meaningful solution.
“The route passes through an outdoor area. What is an outdoor area?”
“...”
“A boundless, endlessly wide space. You can’t fill all of it with your imagination.”
“I can’t fill all of it with my imagination?”
“Other people’s imaginations will flow in and fill the empty spaces.”
I vaguely understood.
In this dream world, vast areas such as outdoor spaces, forests, and the sea were extremely dangerous.
They were too wide for my imagination to fill, and there was no boundary separating inside from outside.
“...”
What would happen when other people’s imaginations flowed in to fill the empty space?
At the very least, it wouldn’t be pleasant.
“What should you do? You can probably guess by now, can’t you? You’re a smart person.”
“Imagine a narrow place with clear boundaries?”
“Be specific! What should you do right now?”
A narrow place with boundaries would be somewhere inside a building.
“How about pressing B2 and imagining a parking garage?”
“And then? It’ll be dangerous again once you leave the parking garage.”
“... In a car.”
“In a car?”
“There’s a driver.”
“What kind of driver?”
A dangerous situation in the Moon’s realm was one where another person’s dream intruded into my domain.
I needed to imagine a space with boundaries that couldn’t be invaded.
Also, no one besides my companions could exist in my imagination.
“A self-driving chauffeur. It’s an AI, not a person.”
“And?”
“I’ll only imagine the inside of the car. A car has boundaries. Then, if I close and open my eyes, I’ll wake up in the parking garage at my destination.”
“You really are smart.”
After hearing that, the Holy Mother smiled softly and reached out to press B2.
“I don’t think I need to help you any further. As you know, I’ll be busy from now on as well.”
“...”
“Then, goodbye...”
“Aedia.”
“Yes?”
“The souls the Prince swallowed.”
“Yes.”
“Are they all living in the dream realm, like we are now?”
“Of course. Everyone lives the life they want! It is the grace and Salvation the Prince grants to everyone.”
“...”
“Though there are a few precautions, of course.”
I watched the Holy Mother disappear with a gentle smile and thought.
To her, this realm might be a kind of heaven created by the Moon.
She believed that when the Moon won, the paradise within the Moon would become reality.
* * *
- You have arrived at your destination.
The clear voice of the autonomous-driving AI informed me that I had arrived.
Holding the doorknob, I once again tried to imagine the place I wanted to go.
Remember!
Since there was a car, there was a road outside, other cars, buildings... All such common-sense thoughts were wrong.
The only things that existed in this place were the car and me.
I hadn’t imagined the rest of the area, so it was all empty.
The car had traveled for around thirty minutes before reaching its destination?
That amount of time had no real meaning.
My subconscious simply thought that commuting took about thirty minutes, so it took thirty minutes.
“...”
Outside was neither an outdoor area nor a city.
It was a narrow, dark parking garage.
A place where there was no one but me.
Only a few empty cars were parked there.
--- Creak!
“Whew...”
Success!
As I walked through the parking garage, an elevator naturally appeared again.
Actually, saying that it appeared wasn’t accurate.
It would be more correct to say that I imagined an elevator, so one came into being.
When I thought of something enclosed that could take me where I wanted to go, an elevator was the obvious answer.
--- Ding!
Standing still inside the elevator, I thought.
Which floor should I press?
The floor number itself didn’t matter.
What mattered wasn’t which floor, but where I needed to go.
If I pressed the third floor and thought of a coffee shop, a coffee shop would appear. If I thought of a dentist’s office, a dentist’s office would appear.
“... A lab.”
A lab was a better fit than a library for a place connected to my past that might contain information about the Moon.
I had imagined the building I entered as a research institute from the beginning.
“My personal lab.”
--- Click!
It was obvious, but I asked one question to make sure.
「Sage’s Advice: 3 -> 2」
‘The Moon is watching everything I do right now, isn’t it?’
「Of course. You are inside the Moon.」
Right. There was no way I could avoid the Moon’s gaze while inside the Moon.
The Moon knew that I had reached this place.
The inside of the Moon was far too different from what I imagined from the outside.
I thought it would be like the Management Bureau’s Ark, a huge ship with countless souls wandering about and praising the Moon, but...
I felt like a mortal who had entered the dream of a demon god.
...
When the elevator doors opened, a bright space came into view.
Books packed tightly together and documents scattered everywhere.
Did I have to search through all these books and papers?
“...”
The Moon already knew I had arrived here anyway, didn’t it?
Should I just say it openly?
“Prince, I trust you’re watching.”
Only my voice echoed through the silent lab.
“As you know, my memories of my first life are hazy. I know that I released you, Prince, but that’s all.”
There was still no reply.
“I heard that I was a senior researcher at the Management Bureau in the past. Is there perhaps anything I left behind at the time?”
I added another sentence, as though in passing.
“If I recover my memories, I’ll be able to help you more.”
--- Thud!
At that moment, a book fell from the shelf.
“Thank you.”
「A Study of Soul Convergence Entities」
It was an unusual title.
Its contents were even further beyond common sense than its title.
「1. Origin
As T. Daymond established long ago, the essence of those called “gods” is simple.
Within the cosmic inhomogeneity that has existed since the creation of heaven and earth...
Countless portions of chaos gather at a single point, and a god is born.
If we trace this process back, could we fashion a Great One with our own hands?
The purest, highest-quality Vessels of chaos we could obtain were souls, so we had no choice but to use human souls.
...
2. Definition
A Soul Convergence Entity is formed when human souls are bound within a structured circuit...
...
When the circuit activates at the end of this process, it is called a Soul Convergence Entity.
As of AS 4731, it is the most powerful form among the seven types of Chaos Entities that can be artificially created.
...
Some point out the inefficiency of creating Soul Convergence Entities.
Certainly, compared to the overwhelming cost efficiency of “Nightmare Seed Embodiments” and the convenience of “Anisotropic Multidimensional Summoned Beasts,” the difficulty of Soul Convergence Entities is remarkable.
...
Yet in terms of the completed product’s upper limit, no other type can ever match a Soul Convergence Entity.
The loss of life during the process is not such a great cost when compared to the exceptional result.」
As I read that far, I realized something.
There wasn’t a single word about the Mirror!
“...”
「3. Growth
The growth of a Soul Convergence Entity proceeds through three broad stages.」
At that point, I understood why the Moon had given me this book.
“You’ve hit a wall somewhere in your growth. Were you unable to find the answer alone? Or is it difficult to carry out even if you know the answer?”
Same bed, different dreams.
Looking at the same material, the Moon sought the answer to its growth, while I sought the Moon’s weakness.
Footnotes:
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