Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 93

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 92: Room 102, Curse Room - ‘House of Horror’ Re (5)

──────

* 2 hours ago

- Park Seung-yeop

The moment I took the syringe from A-ri, I ran like crazy.

It felt similar to shooting balloons.

I shouldn't overthink things and interfere with the fate my blessing had arranged.

Right now, I'm the luckiest person in the world! If I just trust the blessing and go with it at every moment, that'll be the answer!

A tremendous noise began to rise behind me.

It was a strange world. Everything was small.

Come to think of it, the alien-like being that had appeared on the other side of A-ri earlier had been small too.

As I ran frantically, I noticed that the animals were small, and so were the plants.

Was this what Gulliver felt like in the land of little people?

I had become younger and smaller when I entered Room 102, but in this bizarre world, I still counted as a giant creature.

Grass and little trees shook all around me. Soft footsteps pattered near my ears.

There was a sour, pungent smell, like it came from some rotting lump of flesh.

Something had started chasing me.

What should I do? This was always so frustrating.

Why didn't I have any ability that let me fight?

There was something like a big tree ahead. I should climb it.

The moment I took a few steps while thinking that, my body suddenly dropped.

--- Thud!

My foot slipped right into something like a hole in the ground!

At a time like this, what rotten luck...

Rotten luck? Could I possibly be unlucky right now?

Right now, I was the luckiest person alive. Nothing unlucky could happen to me.

Which meant that falling into a hole in the ground hadn't happened because I was unlucky. It had happened because I was lucky!

I pushed my whole body into the hole instead.

After crashing through sticky mud for a while, I landed in a strange underground cave.

Once I fell into the cave and started running, I understood.

This was as far as it went. Luck's protection was ending.

That was the limit of ‘Luck.’ After listening to A-ri, I had run blindly with the syringe in my hand and reached this cave.

...

Was it because the protection had ended? Bat-like creatures watched me with gleaming eyes from every direction.

Bats. Could bats like that exist in the world? Bats with scorpion tails?

I just gritted my teeth and ran toward the end of the cave.

--- Stab!

No matter how fast I ran, a child couldn't outrun flying creatures.

As if to tell me that Luck had run out, the bats kept stabbing me with their tails.

... It hurt. And I could feel something wriggling where I'd been stabbed.

I didn't look at the wounds. Wasn't it impossible to get out of a place this strange with my body still intact anyway?

Even if I died, I had to get the syringe out. It clearly held a message A-ri was trying to send.

I could guess what the message was.

Somewhere on this mountain, there was a place that led to a strange world, and it had to be the enemy's base!

Besides that, A-ri must've learned far more than I had.

Flash!

My vision brightened.

After shutting my eyes against the sudden sunlight, I opened them and realized I had come back outside.

--- Wriggle!

It hurt. Now it hurt so badly I couldn't stand it!

I rolled on the ground, overwhelmed by unbearable pain.

I was so scared. What the hell was happening to my body?

Trembling, I took off my shirt.

“Arghhhh!!!”

I couldn't bear it any longer and screamed.

Those bats had planted eggs in my body!

I could see finger-thick, larva-like things wriggling beneath my skin.

A few of them seemed to have already started burrowing deeper inside.

I'm sorry, everyone. I think this is as far as I can go.

I can't bear the thought of these monsters hatching inside my body.

I got as close to the hiking trail as I could, took off my clothes, and left the syringe wrapped inside them.

Then I jumped off the cliff.

... That was the end of my consciousness. I'm sorry, everyone. Please hang in there.

* Present

- Han Ga-in

After confirming A-ri and Seung-yeop's deaths in the Status Window, we urgently gathered the nuns.

When we went to the house where the children were staying, all the other children were sleeping soundly on the sofas and mattresses.

The Cardinal found a clue.

“It’s the mountain behind the mansion!”

“Huh?”

“Here! Agents usually leave signs like this. Let’s go to the mountain behind the mansion!”

Without another word of explanation, Cardinal Mook-seong ran straight to the car. When I took a closer look, there was an unfamiliar symbol near the door. Was it some kind of code agents used among themselves?

In the confusion, the Cardinal, the nuns, and I got into the car and headed for the mountain behind the mansion.

On the way there, we briefly stopped to pick up Jin-cheol, whom we'd summoned through the Chat Window.

We reached the mountain quickly.

The problem came after that.

Where in this enormous mountain were we supposed to search?

At the very least, we needed to know where Seung-yeop and A-ri had died!

For now, we all hurried up the hiking trail. Had we reached about halfway up the mountain?

Near the path, we found a shirt soaked in blood. Song-i immediately reacted.

“That! That’s Seung-yeop’s shirt!”

A bloodstained shirt. What had happened to him?

When I picked it up, I found a syringe filled with blood inside.

Beside the shirt, someone had also crudely scrawled words in the dirt.

‘Mountain, strange world, base’

Did it mean there was a strange place somewhere in the mountain, and that it was the base?

I understood what it meant, but this wasn't some hill. Where in this vast mountain was the base supposed to be?

As I held the syringe and stared at it in confusion, the blood inside began moving on its own.

“Uh? Uh?”

The Cardinal shouted in alarm beside me.

“Hey! Give me that syringe...”

The blood flowed out of the syringe on its own and entered my body, making my consciousness grow hazy.

* * *

When I came to, I found myself standing in a dark space.

Turning my head, I saw A-ri standing there with a blank expression.

Was this how she was delivering information?

“What the hell were you doing when you died? You could've at least used the Chat Window to call us. Why did you go somewhere dangerous alone?”

A-ri stood there blankly without reacting to my words. When I approached, she simply waved a hand through the air.

...

Something about this A-ri didn't seem real. Was she just some kind of hologram?

An image appeared in the air.

Starting at the mountain entrance, it showed the route to a place with a strange door.

Beyond the door was a bizarre landscape and a beautiful field of flowers.

As if I had to memorize it, the image repeated twice.

After the image ended, A-ri spoke as though she were talking into empty air.

“Beyond this door lies the enemy’s base, the Otherworld. There are flowers here made by processing human souls. It is believed that destroying this entire area is the key to resolving the situation.”

This was far too grand. The place we had to destroy was in the Otherworld?

As I fell into confusion, the hologram before me continued speaking. What it said next was even more shocking.

“I will likely be defeated. My Soul Rank is very high, so sacrificing me would have a greater effect than sacrificing hundreds or thousands of humans.

“An unborn evil god will likely be born soon. You need to escape immediately.”

I shouted in shock.

“What? An evil god is suddenly about to be born? And what do you mean, your Soul Rank is high?”

The moment I asked, I realized something.

My question was something the real A-ri would never have answered.

Yet this hologram, which seemed to have been made with part of A-ri's memories, looked at me and replied.

“A participant’s soul rises in rank as they progress through the hotel. That is one of the hotel’s purposes. My soul has already left the realm of humanity.”

After that answer, I felt as though I were falling into an endless whirlpool and left the dim space.

* * *

- Han Ga-in

The moment I woke up, I relayed the information I'd received.

Somewhere in the mountain was an Otherworld that could be called the enemy’s base, and A-ri herself had been offered as a sacrifice, bringing the birth of the Prisoner, the ‘Unborn One,’ close at hand!

The Cardinal cried out with a grave expression.

“We’re fucked!”

Song-i shouted, confused.

“What happened?”

The one being born in real time answered personally.

---- Gooooooo!

An endlessly wicked roar shook heaven and earth.

Dark clouds began spreading from the mansion, covering the entire sky in an instant.

I looked at the Cardinal blankly, and he sighed.

“We found the base for the evil god’s birth, which is all well and good, but it looks like A-ri was offered as a sacrifice and the evil god is about to be born.”

Elena murmured, terrified.

“You mean...”

“It means everything is about to go to hell.”

The ground shook as black energy erupted from all directions. Jin-cheol shouted urgently.

“Then what do we do?”

“Move now! We have to escape before the ritual is fully complete!”

“What about the base in the Otherworld? Don't we need to wreck that place?”

“You idiot! The evil god has already eaten everything it needs and is about to be born. What good would destroying the base do now? We should've wrecked it before things got this fucked up.”

I understood the situation too.

We had learned the location of the base where the ritual for the evil god's birth was taking place, but A-ri, an extremely concentrated sacrifice, had already died and been offered up. The evil god was about to be born.

This attempt was already ruined.

Of course, it hadn't been an attempt without results. If we could somehow make it to the fourth attempt!

Wouldn't the solution be to destroy the base before the evil god was born and kill the Adversary too?

For now, we had to escape and think about it later.

Everyone hurried into the car and began moving toward the mansion.

One concern came to mind.

‘Should I use Descent?’

The moment I got into the car, I asked everyone around me.

“Should I use Descent and attack that thing? Wouldn't it be weaker right after it's born? The rest of you could put as much distance between yourselves and it as possible.”

The Cardinal answered.

“I don't know.”

“Do you have another idea?”

“Your Descent has limited uses, and I don't like the feeling I get from it because of the Lord. Unless we're certain it will solve the problem, I want to save it.

“As far as I can tell, this attempt is already ruined. Once we failed to stop the evil god’s birth, the best we can hope for is escape.”

“But can we even escape without Descent?”

The condition for escape was to get away from the current crisis, even temporarily.

With an evil god being born, how could we escape the crisis, even for a moment?

This was the exact moment I needed advice.

I prayed desperately. Please, tell me what to do!

[Sage’s Advice: 3 -> 2]

[Sometimes, the only way forward is to ruin the board and buy time.]

... What did that mean? Ruin the board and buy time?

I couldn't understand it at first. I immediately used Sage’s Advice again.

‘How are we supposed to ruin the board and buy time?’

[Sage’s Advice: 2 -> 1]