Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 623

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 622: The Oldest Wish (3)

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「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 233

Current Location: Searching...

Sage’s Advice: 3」

- Han Ga-in

The click of the shutter knocked me out for a moment.

Everything around me was frozen like a paused screen, leaving me trapped in a stifling space.

This was probably a Sealing Zone created by the Living Camera, a world inside a photograph.

--- Riiiip!

When I lost consciousness again and came to, Mi-ro’s face was in front of me.

* * *

“The camera broke?”

“I’m telling you it did! This stupid camera could only move one person at a time!”

“I understand.”

“So I was taking pictures and moving people one by one, then the camera suddenly started making weird noises!”

We were in a place that looked like an extravagant mansion.

As I listened to Mi-ro’s agitated voice and looked at A-ri, she shrugged.

“It temporarily lost its power because we used it too much. It’ll probably take a few months before we can use it again.”

“We only took seven pictures!”

“Mi-ro, this isn’t an ordinary camera. It’s a sealing tool. We only used it like a means of transportation. Seven times is an enormous amount of use.”

Apparently, this was the first time they had used the camera as transportation.

In the past, they had never even taken three pictures in a row.

“Th-then what about the people outside?”

“What about them? The people who got in will have to make do.”

“Eek!”

“Well, at least ‘we’ are all here.”

The Moon’s surface was a place where no one could survive for even a moment without extreme combat prowess.

That was why not everyone from the Hotel Party had come.

Song-i and Grandpa, whose abilities made it difficult for them to endure intense combat, had stayed behind. Sang-hyeon couldn’t come to the Moon because of the delicate Atlas System.

There had been considerable debate over whether to bring Eun-sol.

Many thought the Flute of Rest would be extremely useful inside the Moon, and there were also high expectations for Greedy Hand, which had proven useful in reality several times.

So Eun-sol came to the Moon wearing a Protective Suit.

Excluding Mi-ro, who had been on the Moon from the start, six members of the Hotel Party had arrived through the camera: me, Kim A-ri, Park Seung-yeop, Elena, Lee Eun-sol, and Cha Jin-cheol.

The Living Camera had taken seven pictures in total, which meant exactly one person who was not part of the Hotel Party had entered.

“At first, I didn’t know there was a limit, so I took pictures of people I knew first.”

“So that’s why you photographed us first.”

“As I kept taking pictures, I realized, ‘The camera’s about to break!’ Then I wondered who I should photograph last…”

“You wondered?”

“…The moment that old man appeared, everyone else took a step back.”

The final member Mi-ro had sent into the assault on the Moon.

Not a member of the Hotel Party, but someone who had made everyone in the area step back and make room for him the instant he appeared.

The old man, Elder Wisdom, nodded.

“So other than you people, I was the only one who got in. I understand.”

My companions, aside from me, were seeing Elder Wisdom’s human form for the first time today.

“You certainly have quite a presence.”

“Me?”

“I heard everyone stepped back the moment you appeared.”

“The power of age and experience. The people on the Alliance side know one another, too.”

“You launched an attack with incredible power earlier, so I assumed that was how you got away.”

“It was a great sacrifice. I no longer have an Ark.”

“Can you really come to such a dangerous place?”

“I may not have an Ark, but I still have two Inheritances and two tools left.”

For a moment, no one said a word.

It felt like comforting a rich man who had lost ten trillion won, only for him to say he still had 3.2 trillion won left.

“You still have quite a lot.”

“A rich family can stay afloat for three years even after going bankrupt.”

“…”

“It’s a shame Ryan couldn’t come. Then again, all three spheres of Noble Guardian had exploded, so perhaps there wasn’t much he could do even if he came.”

Elder Wisdom shook his head and gestured to Mi-ro.

Mi-ro soon fidgeted with her pocket watch, her face full of tension.

--- Clank!

A familiar face appeared before us at once. Aedia.

“Ugh…!”

The moment she appeared, Seung-yeop’s back made a tense sound.

Through the record my past self had left behind, I learned that Aedia was the Moon’s Holy Mother.

Everyone also knew that this Aedia was essentially a different person from the one in Room 207.

Still, knowing it in your head and seeing it in person were completely different things.

Looking at Aedia’s clouded, twisted expression, she clearly wasn’t in a normal state.

Eun-sol carefully tried to heal the Holy Mother with the Flute of Rest, but...

“Don’t use the flute.”

“Why?”

“She’ll lose her memories during the recovery process.”

“…I understand.”

If the Holy Mother completely recovered, there was a high chance she would no longer listen to us.

Her current state was ideal.

She could still communicate, but her mind had half collapsed, so she followed our words without resistance.

“Holy Mother, do you recognize me?”

“…Holy Son.”

“You know, don’t you? As long as the Moon exists, you will eventually fall into the Hell of Eternity.”

Look at the terror in the Holy Mother’s eyes.

It was exactly as written in the Status Window!

“I intend to destroy the Moon and save everyone. To do that, I need the Crown. Show me the way to it.”

“…The Crown?”

The Holy Mother looked like she didn’t understand.

It didn’t seem like she was hiding anything. It felt like she simply didn’t recognize the word Crown.

“It may have a different name. I’m looking for the tool the Prince uses to control the Moon.”

“…I don’t know what you mean.”

Her eyes became clearer than before.

She still didn’t understand what I was saying.

Elder Wisdom, who had been watching, quietly stepped in.

“It seems the Holy Mother understands this ‘Crown’ you’re talking about as something completely different.”

“…”

“It seems you don’t know exactly what the Crown is either. And neither does the Holy Mother.”

According to the records left by my past self, the Crown was a measure for controlling a Stage 2 Soul Convergence Entity.

The problem was that there was no information on what exactly the Crown was.

We didn’t even know whether it was a tool, an ability, or something with a physical form.

“Have you tried using Sage’s Advice?”

“Several times already. It didn’t answer.”

“Wisdom cannot create something from nothing. It is the power to draw a great inference from a small piece of existing evidence.”

“…”

“There must be no information among what you’ve learned that lets you infer the Crown’s nature. That’s why you can’t ask about it through Sage’s Advice either.”

Eun-sol, who had been listening, carefully joined in.

“Holy Mother. What is the most mysterious place you can think of? A place even you don’t know much about.”

“…The most mysterious place I can think of?”

“Yes.”

“The Sacred Domain where the Prince resides.”

The Sacred Domain where the Prince resided!

The moment I heard it, I felt certain that was the place.

As I nodded and turned to everyone, Mi-ro muttered uneasily.

“The Moon is way too quiet. Ga-in, you may have forgotten, but right before time was turned back, it was rampaging like a complete demon!”

Why was the Moon quiet right now?

“Unlike then, the Moon is still sealed. The Management Bureau and the Pillagers are also keeping it suppressed.”

“Even so, isn’t it too quiet?”

As though Mi-ro had a point, Elder Wisdom nodded.

“Even with all four limbs bound, the Moon should still have tricks left. Let us leave at once. As you all know, time is on the Moon’s side.”

The Holy Mother barely steadied herself, rose to her feet, and walked away. She stopped in front of the mansion entrance.

After standing there for a long time, seemingly trying to remember something, she opened the door.

--- Creak!

* * *

--- Clunk! Clunk!

Beyond the entrance was a strange room filled with constant clunking noises. Looking at the wall, I saw a transparent control panel.

“What is this place?”

“…Something I make when I want to go somewhere.”

A room that could take the Holy Mother anywhere she wanted to go!

The concept was simple, but I immediately understood how incredible it was.

According to the Status Window records, the inside of the Moon was an unknown place where dreams and reality mixed together.

Even going to work at the Research Lab had apparently been rather difficult for me.

Having lived in the Moon’s domain for such a long time, the Holy Mother could probably create a place like this, a universal key of sorts.

The Holy Mother moved slowly toward the control panel, then suddenly stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

A-ri asked, and the Holy Mother answered.

“…Strange words.”

When I approached, I could see the words written on the panel.

1. Moon Church

2. Plain of Sinners

3. Deepest Sea

4. Sacred Domain

A-ri kept asking questions.

“What are these?”

“I don’t know.”

“You made this place.”

“I was trying to go to the Sacred Domain.”

“There are three more things above the Sacred Domain.”

“These weren’t here originally.”

“Then can’t you remake this elevator? So we can go straight to the Sacred Domain.”

“I’ll try remaking it.”

If they hadn’t been there originally, that meant they had appeared now.

Three obstacles had suddenly appeared along the path prepared by the Holy Mother, our greatest guide.

Who could have done something like this?

Obviously, the Moon.

“Stop.”

“Don’t waste time.”

I stopped A-ri.

At almost the same time, Elder Wisdom stopped the Holy Mother as well.

When I glanced at Elder Wisdom, the old man shrugged and explained.

“There is no point in making a new elevator. The Moon will simply place obstacles again.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Let us depart. Moon Church first, I presume?”

Without a word, the Holy Mother pressed the departure button.

Soon, with a creak and a clunk, the elevator began to move.

…

A vague thought came to mind.

At this point, the Moon probably couldn’t suddenly create something we had never imagined.

If it had that much power, it would have used it long ago.

The three remaining obstacles were things we already knew.

They hadn’t been dangerous when we received the Moon’s formal invitation in the past, but now we were illegal intruders. They were enemies we would have to fight for our lives to overcome.

A-ri muttered with a gloomy expression.

“I know who one of the obstacles is.”

As she said that, A-ri raised a hand and pointed at the Holy Mother.

Aedia tilted her head as though she had no idea what that meant, but the other companions sighed the instant they heard A-ri.

That was right.

Separate from the Summoned Entity Holy Mother brought here with the Time Lender, there was another Holy Mother in this time period!

“…How about we just kill this one?”

If we killed the summoned Holy Mother, the Holy Mother in this time period would die too.

“What if this elevator disappears when we do? I don’t think we have any other way to get to the Sacred Domain.”

“Oh, come on…”

Elder Wisdom cautiously read the room before speaking.

“So it seems we must fight the Holy Mother? Not the Holy Mother before us, but another one? The name of the first stop just happens to be Moon Church.”

His intuition was astonishing for someone who knew nothing at all about the Time Lender.

“What about the other two? Do you have any guesses?”

This time, I answered.

“…I wrote it down in the Status Window.”

“What did you write?”

“There are countless souls that turned into evil spirits through infinite suffering. It says not to carelessly enter an open area…”

“There happens to be a ‘plain’ among the stops.”

Moon Church, where the Holy Mother waited.

The Plain of Sinners, where countless evil spirits waited.

“Then what is the Deepest Sea?”

“…”

I didn’t know.