WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 630: The Oldest Wish (11)
──────
「User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)
Date: Day 234
Current Location: Searching....
Sage’s Advice: 0」
- Han Ga-in
The Sacred Domain, where the Prince, ruler of the Moon, resided.
The Sacred Domain was said to have an extremely simple structure: a long, straight path with no forks.
Still, even after summoning the Sacred Sun and using my superhuman vision to look ahead, I couldn't see beyond a certain point.
“Do we just keep following this path?”
“Yes. It won't be easy.”
“Has anything ever been easy?”
The Holy Mother said the remaining path would be difficult, and Elder Wisdom replied as though asking why she was stating the obvious.
“... I've never gone all the way to the end either. Usually, the Prince would come to see me off.”
Hard to reach the end?
I wanted a more detailed explanation, but there hadn't been a single spare moment since I summoned the Holy Mother.
It was no different now.
She only had a little over five minutes left.
“Let's go.”
* * *
I realized it before I had taken more than a few steps.
Every step was incredibly difficult.
It felt like climbing an impossibly steep hill.
There was no physical incline.
Human senses couldn't understand the situation, so all they could do was interpret it as something similar to climbing uphill.
“...”
I took another step in silence and rose to a higher place once more.
A higher place.
A higher dimension.
A lofty realm.
I had experienced something similar before.
--- Tap!
“This is a little difficult.”
Elder Wisdom, who had been walking in front, stopped.
“Are you all right?”
“For now.”
“...”
“I remember a feeling like this. It was a very long time ago for me... but it should still be fresh in your minds.”
“The Sanctuary of Blessings.”
“Yes. It feels like meeting the Owl at the Sanctuary of Blessings...”
It was a sensation I experienced whenever I met a Sponsor at the Sanctuary of Blessings.
The feeling of losing my body, leaving only my mind to rise endlessly upward.
Not upward in a physical sense, but being drawn toward a fundamentally higher realm.
I vaguely understood part of the Sacred Domain's secret.
“This isn't level ground. It's a path leading upward.”
“The farther we go, the higher the realm becomes...”
Then Mi-ro muttered from behind us.
“Ga-in, don't we seem a little smaller?”
“It's an illusion.”
“I, I really think we got smaller-”
“We didn't get smaller. This space is growing enormous.”
“What?”
“Let's go. There's only one path.”
A few more minutes passed.
When I looked back because it had grown too quiet behind us, Mi-ro and the Holy Mother were gone.
“Holy Mother.”
“Ha! I figured she'd cause trouble someday. So it's now?”
The Holy Mother had suddenly disappeared with Mi-ro, yet Elder Wisdom didn't seem particularly surprised.
His reaction was more like, So this is what I'd been expecting.
I felt much the same.
“If she'd remained in her original state, it might have been different, but the Holy Mother was visibly recovering.”
“She was.”
At first, she had been like a child whose mind was half broken, following my words without question.
She would've been easier to handle if she'd stayed that way, but at some point, she began to recover.
The first turning point was probably when she became aware of another version of herself at the Moon Church.
After that, repeatedly receiving the Flute's help to maintain the elevator had been the decisive blow.
“She must have found a purpose of her own.”
“... What do you intend to do?”
“We keep going.”
“Yes. Let's do that.”
There was a reason we hadn't watched the Holy Mother closely even though we knew she had other thoughts.
A reason Elder Wisdom and I hadn't panicked much after confirming that she had suddenly disappeared.
“She doesn't mean us any harm.”
“It seems you felt something in the Deepest Sea as well.”
The Deepest Sea, where everyone's thoughts had unintentionally become mixed together.
I had vaguely read the Holy Mother's thoughts there.
I didn't know exactly what she intended to do, but she had no intention of harming us.
Her goal was what she had said before.
‘A happy ending.’
I wasn't worried about the Holy Mother, but I was curious.
She only had around three minutes left.
What could she accomplish in such a short time?
* * *
Several more minutes passed.
It was also about the time the Holy Mother, a Summoned Entity, would have used up all her remaining time and vanished.
During that time, we continued forward without rest. No, upward.
“Ugh...!”
Elder Wisdom, who had been ahead of me, finally failed to withstand the height and dropped to his knees, panting.
“Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right?”
“Let's rest for a moment. We won't be able to fight like this anyway.”
“I think I'm beginning to understand the Crown.”
“It seems we're thinking along similar lines.”
The Crown was a safeguard left behind by the primordial civilization to control a Stage 2 Soul Convergence Entity.
It was the power that allowed the Prince to suppress even a great being like Contradiction.
“You said something to Contradiction earlier, didn't you? That the Crown's principle was the lofty voice heard from the throne.”
“I did.”
“We are moving toward a lofty place. In other words, this entire space is part of the Crown!”
“...”
“We are moving toward the High Realm...”
“Elder Wisdom, you need to stay calm.”
My next words were somewhat impulsive. I wanted to ease even a little of the pressure Elder Wisdom was suffering under in front of me.
“I'll be scared too if my last remaining companion collapses.”
“Ha... Companion? Do you really think of me that way?”
“Aren't we? I think we've been in the same boat for quite a while.”
“Do you lie even to people in the same boat as you?”
“Sometimes.”
“...”
“...”
“What you said during the negotiations. That it didn't matter whether the Management Bureau, the Alliance, or the Pillagers won.”
“...”
“That was a complete lie, wasn't it?”
What I had said during the negotiations.
My companions and I had fallen into an empty world with no family or anything else.
There was little difference between the Management Bureau and the Pillagers to us, so we could accept a Pillager victory as well.
It was a lie I had made up to form an alliance with the Pillagers.
I had deceived them then, but Elder Wisdom had figured out the lie over time.
The biggest reason was probably A-ri and Grandpa Mook-seong themselves.
Whatever anyone else thought, those two had loyalty and a sense of duty toward the Management Bureau. They could never accept a Pillager victory.
I could deceive the Pillager faction, who had never met us directly.
Since the need for an alliance was clear, they might think I had lorded over A-ri and Grandpa Mook-seong like a king and crushed their opinions.
But Elder Wisdom had watched our relationship from right beside us.
He knew I would never ignore and suppress A-ri and Grandpa's wishes.
“Doesn't that make us even more like companions?”
“What?”
“You noticed my lie, but you didn't tell the Pillagers.”
“...”
“If anything, it seems you helped my lie. Didn't you submit a report like this? Young Wisdom wishes to join the Alliance?”
If Elder Wisdom had joined in my lie, the Pillagers would trust me completely.
“Let's be honest with each other.”
“Be honest?”
“What are mere Pillagers to you?”
“... If the Alliance heard this conversation right now, they'd immediately spit blood and collapse.”
“What does it matter if extras who couldn't even come here spit blood or hang themselves?”
I knew Elder Wisdom.
I knew the one desperate wish in his heart.
Elder Wisdom had only one wish.
To escape this utterly futile reality and challenge the third floor, the path of Ascension!
“I trust you, Elder Wisdom. I trust that desperate wish of yours to reach the third floor.”
“...”
“So trust me too. I'm working toward your wish.”
“Ha! So this whole process is your devotion to getting me to the third floor?”
“While I'm at it. We've rested enough. Let's go.”
The road ahead was still long.
...
--- Clack! Clack!
As I continued forward, upward, a memory suddenly came to mind.
In the evenings, I used to lean against my apartment railing and look down at Seoul's night skyline.
Hundreds, thousands of cars filled the roads, while people of all kinds hurried about in every direction.
When I looked down at them and held out my palm, perspective, which made distant things small and nearby things large, gave me an amusing experience.
Dozens of cars and hundreds of people seemed to fit within a space no larger than my palm.
It made me feel like an enormous giant.
Like I had become a great being beyond comparison with the ant-sized people below.
Wasn't there a saying?
‘Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle.’
That was the exhilaration of being high up.
I was now heading toward a place so endlessly high that no airplane or spaceship in the world could ever reach it.
...
At some point, even standing became painful.
It wasn't easy to withstand this position, this vast height.
At the same time, another thought occurred to me.
If I could endure all the way to the end of this path, the person I became afterward might be something completely different from who I had been before.
“Gasp!”
“Let's rest for a moment.”
“The Moon... If the Prince attacks us now...”
“If he intended to, he would've done so long ago.”
“...”
“Can't you feel it? Even the Prince can't act freely in this place.”
The Prince wasn't in a comfortable position either.
The ancient seal placed on the Moon.
The intense pressure applied from outside by the Management Bureau and the Pillager Alliance.
The burden inflicted by Contradiction, which had transformed into an unknown form.
Finally, the Sacred Domain's own peculiarity!
The many safeguards prepared by every force under heaven were suppressing the Prince.
I had to believe that and keep moving.
Elder Wisdom, who had been panting, suddenly looked at me and spoke as if dumbfounded.
“You've gotten farther away from me than before.”
“I guess my pace is a little slow.”
“Slow? Aren't you deliberately walking slowly?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you using me as a lab rat or a sacrifice? I walk far ahead and endure the Sacred Domain's pressure, then if something dangerous happens, I'm the first one to suffer it.”
“You misunderstand me greatly.”
“Misunderstand? Aren't you ashamed after talking about companions earlier?”
“That's exactly what you misunderstand.”
“What?”
“This is how Hotel-style companions work. If we all go through dangerous things together, aren't we liable to die together?”
“You...”
“They say not to put all your eggs in one basket. Only one person should enter a dangerous place at a time.”
After hearing my logical argument, Elder Wisdom opened and closed his mouth like a fish before speaking mournfully.
“Why must I be in the more dangerous position?”
“Who turned back time? Me. The person with more information needs to live longer for us to have a better chance of winning.”
“... You have a reason for everything, don't you?”
“Of course.”
“Ha...”
“Are you all right?”
“Do you know what makes me saddest right now?”
“What is it?”
“The fact that I find your words completely reasonable. Still, I have to say this.”
“I'm listening.”
“Are you even human?”
“I'll take that as a compliment.”
“... I'm trapped. I know it, but there's no way out.”
“Trust me.”
“You're the one who trapped me.”
“Come on, lead the way. Don't we need to reach the third floor?”
...
Three or four more minutes passed.
--- Thud!
Elder Wisdom, who had endured in front of me until now, finally collapsed.
“Ah... Teresia... Cedric... Help me. Help me...”
Teresia? Cedric?
They seemed to be Elder Wisdom's old companions.
“For so long... I endured and endured...”
“Elder Wisdom, Elder Wisdom!”
“Isn't this enough...? At this point, I've done my best...”
“Damn it! Can't you hear me?”
“Isn't anyone there? Someone to free me from this hell...”
“...”
Elder Wisdom wasn't dead.
He might wake up at the right time and help me.
For now, though, he was helpless.
...
Something began to cast a faint silhouette ahead.
I could feel a distant presence watching me.
The ending was approaching.
The only question was whether it would be a happy ending or a bad ending!
--- Splash!
Footnotes:
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