Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 86

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 85: Party Time (7) - The Secret of Room 103 (2)

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- Han Ga-in

Room 103. Even now, it was hard to comprehend how utterly brutal its conditions had been. What exactly was Room 103’s secret?

Perhaps she felt my gaze. Song-i turned to me.

“Ga-in? Is something up?”

“No. I was just thinking again about how incredible what you did in Room 103 was.”

“Ahaha. What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

“Talking about it made me curious.”

“Huh?”

“Room 103. Isn’t it strange? The moment it begins, everyone is imprisoned in an alien ranch and buried beneath the hallucination that they’ve become animals. On top of that, the whole place is a spaceship flying through space.

“How are you even supposed to escape? Was using your Affinity to win over Athanasia and the Devourer the only way?”

“That can’t be it. Not every Hotel party could’ve had someone with Affinity.”

“Then was there another way?”

Song-i looked up at the sky, deep in thought.

“Based on my experience clearing it, there were a few openings.”

Eun-sol cut in.

“Then tell us what you felt while going through Room 103.”

“Uh! There’s no need to go over that again...”

“This isn’t so we can listen to you brag, Song-i. The only rooms we’ve resolved so far are Rooms 101 and 103, and we all know about Room 101 because we resolved it together.

“But nobody besides you really knows Room 103, since you’re the one who experienced it directly. If we properly analyze the rooms we’ve already resolved, we might find clues about rooms we haven’t cleared yet.”

“...I think I need some time to organize my thoughts if I’m going to explain it well. I’ll tell you soon.”

“Okay.”

Room 103, which nobody but Song-i had truly encountered.

I was curious. From the perspective of the person who resolved it, what had Room 103’s Escape Route and “openings” been?

Maybe she needed time to sort through her thoughts alone.

Song-i needed more time to prepare for her “lecture” than I expected.

On the afternoon of the second day of Party Time, we returned from the safari exhausted, ate quickly, then rested.

On the morning of the third day, I tried to avoid Grandfather as he chased me around. In the end, he caught me, and I had no choice but to keep running through the park under the guise of exploring.

It was only around lunchtime on the third day that Song-i began her “Room 103 Special Lecture.”

* * *

“The purpose of explaining Room 103 today isn’t to brag. I want us to understand the structure of Curse Rooms by going over Room 103 again, since the rest of you didn’t properly experience it.

“First, I’ll explain the structure of Curse Rooms as I understand it. Then I’ll point out the individual ‘weaknesses’ of Rooms 101 and 103.

“Lastly, I’ll talk about the possible ways Room 103 could have been resolved or escaped from.

“If there’s anything you find difficult to understand, or anything you see differently, please speak up.”

Song-i somehow looked like a teacher.

“First, the structure of Curse Rooms.

“Based on everything we’ve gathered so far, Curse Rooms have the following structure.”

Song-i showed us what she had written in her notebook.

1. Participant Party

2. Adversaries

3. Prisoners

“Of course, there are many NPCs who don’t fit into these roles, but they have neither much of a role nor much influence.

“The beings who actually affect the scenario can be divided into three groups.

“First, the participant party, meaning us.

“Second, the beings we have to face. To borrow the Hotel’s term, the ‘Adversaries.’

“Third, the ‘Prisoners,’ beings with near-divine power who can only exert indirect influence because of the immense restrictions placed upon them.

“By the way, Grandfather told me that the Management Bureau uses the term ‘Prisoners.’”

Grandfather nodded from across the room.

“Based on what we’ve confirmed so far, the Adversaries generally plot all sorts of things inside their rooms.

“The Adversary in Room 101 was Kim Sang-min. In Room 102, it was probably the Elder, the master of the mansion. In Room 103, it was Athanasia. In Room 104, it was likely the Guide.

“Prisoners seem to be deeply connected to the Source of the Curse, but I don’t think we need to deal with them. They’re beings beyond anything we could possibly handle in the first place.”

Eun-sol replied.

“Looking at it all together, Room 103 was ridiculously difficult, wasn’t it? The Guide in Room 104 was incredibly powerful too, of course, but at least there was only one of them.

“Was the Adversary in Room 103 all of Athanasia? From what I heard, every single one of them was absurdly strong.”

Song-i continued.

“That’s what I want to explain next. The ‘weaknesses’ of each Curse Room. Curse Rooms have such horrible conditions that it’s hard to understand how anyone could clear them when you don’t know anything about them.

“But Curse Rooms clearly have weaknesses you can exploit, and if you use those weaknesses, they can be cleared more easily than you’d think.

“Room 103 was the same. Let’s start with Room 101, which we all know well. What do you think Room 101’s weakness was?”

After thinking it over, one thing came to mind.

“The Adversary, Kim Sang-min, was weaker than expected?”

“That’s right. He created a giant, but it was only a somewhat strong creature. Kim Sang-min himself was just a lump of flesh, and he couldn’t even move.

“The hard part was finding Kim Sang-min, moving from the family to the broadcasting station, from the broadcasting station to the hospital, and from the hospital to the hospital room.

“Once we found the Adversary himself, he was incredibly easy to kill. I think that was Room 101’s weakness.”

Room 101’s weakness had been the Adversary’s poor combat ability and his inability to move.

Mook-seong nodded before asking a question.

“That makes sense for Room 101. But I still don’t understand Room 103. Aren’t the Athanasia in Room 103 incredibly strong individually, and numerous as well?”

“Room 103 had one element that was decisively different from the other rooms. That was its weakness.”

Something unique to Room 103 that made it decisively different?

“Of every room we’ve found, Room 103 is the only one where the Adversaries and the Prisoner are hostile to one another.

“Room 101’s Prisoner had not properly appeared even by the end, but at least they didn’t seem hostile to Kim Sang-min.

“Room 102’s Prisoner was probably the demon beneath the mansion. The master of the mansion received power from that demon and tried to free it. They were cooperating.

“Room 104’s Prisoner was the Lord. The Guide worshipped the Lord as a god. They were cooperating.

“Room 103’s Prisoner was the Devourer. Athanasia, the Adversaries, had imprisoned the Devourer through some unknown facility and drained its power for eons.

“The first thing the Devourer did after I freed it was slaughter Athanasia. They were enemies.”

Of all the rooms, Room 103 was the only one where the Prisoner hated the Adversaries.

That was Room 103’s weakness.

“You probably think the Devourer took my side because I had Affinity, and that I resolved it with that power.

“But Prisoners have power comparable to gods. Would a being like that really be influenced so heavily by a blessing?

“I think anyone who could make contact with the Devourer, not just me, would have gained its active assistance.

“My blessing may have made the Devourer a little kinder to me, but even without it, the Devourer would have helped participants.

“After all, it was a being that hated Athanasia without end.”

Only then did I begin to understand.

Room 103’s Prisoner had never been an Adversary. From the start, it had been a participant’s ally.

That was the most important part of resolving Room 103.

Still, that explanation wasn’t enough. I had a few questions.

“I understand that the Devourer would’ve helped if any of us had made contact with it. But was there even a way to get to it?

“You got out by winning over an Athanasia with Affinity, but I don’t think we could’ve won one over or killed one.”

“That’s exactly the assumption we need to abandon. Fighting Athanasia in Room 103 isn’t our role. If you think that way, you can never clear it.

“Each Athanasia is a demigod-like being from a human perspective.

“I only killed one Athanasia while escaping Room 103, and even then, the Devourer had already stopped it. I just finished it off.

“Wiping out Athanasia is the Devourer’s role. What was our role? Holding on until the Devourer recovered.”

Our role in escaping and resolving Room 103.

Song-i said it was to hold on until the Devourer recovered.

“From the moment you enter Room 103, around two weeks? Three weeks? I don’t know the exact time. But after roughly that long, the Devourer recovers enough strength to attempt an escape.

“It can send shockwaves through the entire spaceship and stop Athanasia. So our role is to hold on until then.

“If we had just endured, the Devourer would’ve done something afterward. It might have contacted us itself, or it might have destroyed the spaceship without involving us.”

Mook-seong, who had been nodding along, spoke.

“So you mustn’t even consider fighting Athanasia. I understand that much. But is it possible to survive for two or three weeks while your intelligence and soul are being exploited?”

Song-i answered.

“It wasn’t the bracelet that extracted intelligence. That was the role of the necklaces around our necks at the time. The necklaces had physical forms, even though we couldn’t see them.

“Their durability was weak, too. I think the first step would have been to damage them somehow.”

“If we damaged the necklaces, wouldn’t Athanasia intervene and put them back on?”

“They didn’t intervene right away when my necklace broke. We can’t know for sure now, but I can think of a few reasons.

“Their system might not have been able to immediately detect the failure of each individual necklace. Another theory is that fitting necklaces required restarting the entire farm.

“From what I observed, necklaces were only put on when Animal Farm had stopped operating.

“It might not have been worth restarting the entire farm just because the ‘production’ of a few livestock animals had decreased.

“So the Escape Route likely involved destroying the necklaces, stopping the extraction of intelligence, and holding on.”

Seung-yeop, looking puzzled, asked, “How is that an escape? We wouldn’t have gotten off the spaceship. We’d still be livestock trapped on the farm.”

“Think about escapes in the other rooms. In Room 101, just putting distance between ourselves and the family counted as an escape, right?

“In Room 102, just ruining the Elder’s ritual counted as an escape. In Room 104, just getting expelled from the school counted as an escape.

“But the crises in those worlds weren’t actually resolved at all.

“Even if you got away from the family in Room 101, the world was still ruined. Even if you ruined the Elder’s ritual in Room 102, the Elder would eventually lure in ordinary people again and summon the demon somehow.

“Even if we were expelled in Room 104, Hotel High would keep operating just fine.

“To ‘escape,’ we don’t need to resolve that world’s crisis. It counts if we only temporarily get away from the immediate threat bearing down on us.

“Think of Room 103 the same way. Like Seung-yeop said, breaking the necklaces doesn’t change the fact that we’re livestock trapped inside. But it does free us from the fate of having our intelligence drained until we die.”

I was beginning to understand.

The Hotel clearly distinguished escape from resolution.

Unlike resolution, escape didn’t require us to solve the world’s fundamental curse. We only needed to temporarily get away from the present danger.

Think back on Room 101. Did physically getting away from the family have any real meaning? The world was still ruined. Yet escaping the immediate danger of being killed by the family had been enough for it to count as an escape.

Room 103 could be understood the same way. Even if we remained livestock trapped inside, breaking the necklaces and extending our lives by several months or more, instead of soon dying with our souls drained away, could have been enough for it to count as an escape.

“Lastly, I’ll talk about the ‘normal scenario progression’ we would have experienced if my Affinity hadn’t caused something mysterious to happen. It’s sort of an alternate scenario.

“At first, we probably wouldn’t have known anything. We would’ve just struggled desperately to survive as animals. Then, one of our necklaces would have broken ‘by chance.’ Like mine did.

“That person would have lived for quite a while after everyone else died. After holding out for a few weeks, they would have seen the Devourer trying to overturn the spaceship. The hallucination would have broken during that process, and they would have learned Animal Farm’s true nature.

“The Devourer’s rebellion probably would have failed without our cooperation, and ‘Escape’ would have appeared at that point.

“After getting out, we would have tried again while aware of the Devourer’s existence. On the next attempt, we would’ve tried to cooperate somehow with the Devourer, which was hostile to Athanasia.

“That’s where ‘escape’ and ‘resolution’ would have split apart.

“Breaking the necklaces to survive long-term is ‘escape.’ Making contact with the Devourer somehow, joining forces with it, and successfully freeing it is ‘resolution.’”

Only after listening to the lecture throughout the entire meal did I understand Room 103’s general structure.

“So if the necklace doesn’t break ‘by chance’ at the start, we all just die?”

“That’s right. But Room 101 was the same, wasn’t it? If Seung-yeop hadn’t ‘happened’ to avoid his family because he was busy playing League, we all would’ve died.”

A-ri, who had been listening for a while, spoke up.

“I think there might have been another way to escape besides ‘a necklace happens to break.’”

Song-i replied.

“Of course there was. I only talked about what I came up with.”

“For example, maybe there was a way for us to obtain the role of ‘farm family’ within the ranch? Unlike ordinary livestock, they were meant to be used as farm managers for a long time, so they probably wouldn’t have been killed quickly.”

“That makes sense. I just don’t know about that part.”

That was the end of our review of Room 103.

After the long discussion, I briefly summarized it in four lines on paper.

* * *

Beginning -> Destroy the necklaces to stop intelligence extraction. Secure long-term survival.

Escape -> Survive for two to three weeks to meet the conditions. Then witness the Devourer’s rebellion.

Resolution -> Learn of the Devourer’s existence, gain its cooperation, and wipe out Athanasia.

& Maybe there was a way to obtain the role of farm family?

* * *

Writing it down made me understand again why most participants in the Hotel failed.

You had to be smart, and you had to be strong...

But fundamentally, wasn’t it a structure where you got wiped out before you could even try anything if you weren’t lucky?