WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 627: The Oldest Wish (8)
──────
- Elena
A maxim left behind by a great philosopher.
I think, therefore I am.
By that logic, I must clearly be something that exists right now, but...
I couldn't see anything.
I couldn't hear anything.
Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch: I couldn't feel any of them.
The only sense that still worked was pain.
A staggering headache consumed my consciousness.
At some point, I began to see and hear something like static.
Noise I couldn't understand.
A series of images I couldn't interpret.
Only then did a vague realization come to me.
My eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin, my old senses, had vanished. Something else had appeared in their place, gathering information about my surroundings.
What little remained of my brain and soul couldn't interpret that information. They could only feel excruciating pain.
It made sense.
If the brain were a computer, it was like suddenly saying, "Hello?" to a machine that only understood a language of zeroes and ones.
A computer couldn't understand words like that.
My mind couldn't interpret this information.
...
I couldn't control it.
I couldn't control it.
I couldn't control it.
My reborn body constantly sent me incomprehensible information, yet "Elena" couldn't interpret any of it.
I couldn't even give it commands.
It was ridiculous, but it felt as if my mind and body spoke different languages.
Too many sudden changes had happened before I could adapt.
...
Why had this happened? A threat to my life?
Life-threatening situations were routine in the Hotel, so that alone couldn't explain it.
The Holy Mother.
I'd seen a being closer to immortality than any participant I'd ever encountered.
Dismemberment? Decapitation? Full-body burns?
To the Holy Mother, wounds like those were no more than scratches she could brush off with a smile.
An absurd creature that could regenerate even if her whole body were ground to pieces in a millstone and scattered across the Pacific Ocean!
No, a mineral.
The Holy Mother had replaced her entire body with Qliphoth Crystal and gained immortality.
Her existence had given me a realization.
...
A memory from long ago.
Beatrix, who had killed us over and over in Room 201.
Beatrix had long since lost her body. Only her brain, preserved in a glass case, remained.
The body we had seen was merely the result of Ominous Imagination.
Just as Qliphoth Crystal could, Ominous Imagination could replace a body.
It was also a way to overcome both the difficulty of controlling Ominous Imagination's monsters and the frailty of its true body.
I had become Ominous Imagination itself. It truly was ultimate power!
There was a problem, though.
A restriction that Beatrix, the original owner of the ability, hadn't had, but I did.
A time limit.
...
Something fell.
Then, somewhere, something crumbled.
Nothing I created could exist forever.
A body was no exception.
If a creation vanished, I could simply recover my power and make it again.
But what about my body?
What would remain after it disappeared?
...
I had come to a realization.
I had, but something was missing.
I needed something to fill that gap.
I needed it, but...
I felt like I would die before I found it.
Would I die so futilely, even after gaining that vague realization at the very end?
At that moment.
A saving hand reached out.
As always, it was "us" who made up for what I lacked.
"E-Elena, sis! Please wait just a little longer!"
Just before my consciousness cut out, my mind interpreted that strange information for the first time.
Fragments of Qliphoth Crystal scattered everywhere?
How were those pieces still here?
* * *
「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 234
Current Location: Searching...
Sage’s Advice: 3」
- Han Ga-in
"The date changed."
"It did."
"..."
"..."
"One use of advice was wasted."
"Yes."
Yesterday, I used the first piece of advice to ask about the Plain of Sinners, and the second to ask about the Deepest Sea.
The third disappeared when the date changed.
"I was saving it for a Danger Alert."
"So was I."
"If I'd known this would happen, I would've used it."
"We didn't know the date would change..."
Saving a use of advice for a Danger Alert, only to lose it because the date changed before we could use it?
It happened often in the Hotel.
The reason was different every time.
The most common cause was getting caught up in a fierce battle or deep thought.
Sometimes, we didn't realize the date was about to change because we had no idea what time it was.
There were also plenty of times when the flow of time itself was distorted.
"Can't be helped."
"We should forget what has passed."
As I nodded, I felt Mi-ro looking at us with disbelief from beside me.
In any less tense situation, I would have expected her to say something like, "You two really get along!"
"You two really get along!"
That was Mi-ro.
She never knew how to hold back what she wanted to say.
"..."
It was true that I had started feeling a subtle sense of kinship with Elder Wisdom.
We shared the same blessing.
From one perspective, we were rivals. From another, Elder Wisdom was someone who had spent a long time wrestling with concerns similar to mine.
Someone I wanted to sit down and talk with someday, if we had the time.
At the same time, a cold voice whispered in one corner of my mind.
'Elder Wisdom has only one goal: escape this false world and ascend to the third floor. To achieve that goal, Elder Wisdom could betray me at any time.'
Well, it was only natural that we both had our own calculations. There was no point dwelling on it.
There was another, more urgent problem.
--- Gulp!
Mi-ro grabbed my collar, her eyes trembling.
"Y-You still don't know? Who's going to appear? You used advice earlier too!"
"... What about you, Elder Wisdom?"
"I'm sorry. I have no idea either."
"Holy Mother?"
"Nothing comes to mind."
Who was waiting in the next area, the Deepest Sea?
No one here had any clue.
I could understand why Elder Wisdom and I, outsiders, wouldn't know.
But how could even the Holy Mother, who had served the Moon for eons, be unable to guess?
The previous two areas had been different.
Just from hearing the names Moon Church and Plain of Sinners, we had predicted the enemies would be the Holy Mother and a vast number of wraiths.
Let's consider the worst possibility.
What if the Moon was using a secret trump card it had never used before, one it had hidden even from its trusted Holy Mother?
Elder Wisdom muttered.
"I've considered that too."
"..."
"What if it's a secret weapon the Moon created recently?"
The same thought I had.
"But yesterday's answer was different."
"..."
"I asked who the enemy in the Deepest Sea was, and the answer was, 'The beginning of every problem.'"
"It told me, 'A being you already know.'"
The beginning of every problem.
A being I already knew.
Ah, it felt like I couldn't breathe.
Couldn't it just tell us clearly?
That damn Owl.
"That damned bird has tormented me for over ten thousand years."
"..."
"Judging by answers that lousy, there's no point asking more."
I suddenly felt closer to Elder Wisdom.
Just as our frustration reached its peak.
--- Clunk!
"We will soon arrive at the next area."
The words "Deepest Sea" began flashing on the display.
At last, Elder Wisdom muttered with a grave expression.
"Unfortunately, there is no perfect plan. Each of us will have to improvise."
--- Clunk!
We arrived.
* * *
The first thing I noticed was irresistible pressure.
The pressure of the deep sea, enough to crush a human in an instant!
We had expected this much from the name Deepest Sea, and we had prepared a countermeasure.
Elder Wisdom immediately summoned something like a thin, transparent membrane around us.
"It won't last long!"
That membrane was an Escape Tool Elder Wisdom had obtained long ago from the Hotel, or the School.
Like Wing Boots or a Protective Suit, Escape Tools were basically meant for one person.
Using one to protect several people like this meant it couldn't last long!
--- Fwoosh...!
I summoned the Sacred Sun and moved toward the elevator entrance.
Once the membrane tore, it would be my turn to hold out.
In truth, pressure like this didn't matter.
The Deepest Sea's true enemy had to be something else!
"Show yourself...!"
Everyone stared tensely beyond the blue sea.
--- Swoooosh!
Something appeared, cutting through the ocean.
Its overwhelming size was impossible to estimate.
"..."
Huge.
Vast.
Overwhelming.
It was as if nature itself had come alive.
--- Beeeep!
A phantom sound filled my mind, and my thoughts abruptly stopped.
It felt as though something of overwhelming weight was pressing down on my entire body!
As everyone staggered in dizziness, a "box" sprang from Elder Wisdom's hand once more.
"Open! Pandora's Box!"
Pandora's Box opened.
Then a voice rang out like an incantation.
"The source of all evil has been released...!"
The hunger of the starving.
The rage of the betrayed.
The pain of those hung from a pole.
The despair of those who lost their fortunes.
The obsession of those who lost love.
The grief of those who lost family.
The helplessness of the powerless.
The primordial evil that gave birth to every wickedness in the world!
A vicious evil spread from Pandora's Box like mist. The colossal form approaching the elevator flinched for the first time.
Then came another incantation.
"Only one thing remains in the box: hope...!"
Hope, the morning star that shone brighter than anything in the darkest hell, warmly embraced us all.
It was incomparably clear and refreshing.
For that moment, I couldn't feel any pressure from the monster outside the elevator.
"... What an incredible Inheritance! Even for the Hotel, a treasure like this..."
The Holy Mother's voice was full of sincere admiration.
"This is no time for admiration! We've only bought a little time!"
Elder Wisdom's reply was firm.
That was right. No matter how powerful one Inheritance was, it couldn't truly threaten a being that overwhelming.
"Th-That... What in the world is that? It isn't even the Moon itself, so how could something like that..."
Elder Wisdom was still confused.
The Holy Mother and I, on the other hand, had realized the monster's identity.
"That is also the Moon."
"What?"
I knew.
I knew there was something like that, and I had even heard its voice before.
I just never imagined it would appear in a situation like this!
The Holy Mother often spoke of the Moon and the Prince as separate beings.
The records I had left in my Status Window when I disappeared also sometimes described the Moon and the Prince as though they were different beings.
That wasn't simply an odd habit of speech.
The Moon was a Stage 2 Soul Convergence Entity.
In other words, an incomplete god that couldn't achieve Unification of its minds.
The primordial civilization had called it a "god afflicted with madness."
The Prince was never the entirety of the Moon.
He merely represented the whole Moon through the mysterious power of the Crown!
"... It is one of the Moon's other minds."
It was dizzying.
The Holy Mother of the Moon Church had been an opponent we could defeat in battle.
The wraiths of the Plain of Sinners had barely any intelligence, so the bait strategy had worked.
Even the Prince in the final area, the Sacred Domain, had the uncertain possibility of using the Crown against him!
How were we supposed to deal with that monster, another mind of the Moon?
We could never defeat it by force.
It was too intelligent for bait to work.
We hadn't even obtained the Crown yet!
No solution came to mind, and I felt like I couldn't breathe.
At that moment.
「Advice: 3 -> 0」
'If it was such a perfect card, why do you think the Prince didn't use it before he was driven to this point?'
Footnotes:
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