WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 95: Room 102, Curse Room - ‘House of Horror’ Re (8)
──────
* Fourth Attempt
- Lee Eun-sol
How many hours had it been?
All we had done was ring the Bell and wait for the Destruction Team to destroy the Altar and return.
---Clang! Clang!
It really sounded terrible. I'd heard plenty of bells in my life, but I'd never heard one that sounded this awful.
At first, I thought Ga-in was just bad at ringing it. Then we started taking turns to conserve stamina and realized the Bell itself was the problem.
Of course, it suppressed evil power. It didn't need to sound pleasant.
Ga-in, who had been resting across from us with a cup of coffee, looked up.
“Eun-sol.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s a little late, but what do you think that hint meant?”
Hint [Abandon the assumption that you have to go to _____.]
“Come to think of it, we stopped thinking about the hint at some point, didn’t we?”
“We considered it before the second attempt, but when we entered again, the scenario had changed completely.
“After that, everyone was so busy adapting to the new scenario that we never paid attention to the hint.”
“What were the candidates we came up with back then?”
“The first one was the mansion. Then Grandfather and A-ri said there were plenty of other possibilities, so we came up with the church, the underground, the lake, the library, and so on.”
“Looking at it now, it definitely wasn’t the mansion. We had to go there no matter what. I don’t think it was the church either.
“We got quite a bit of information there. The lake hadn’t been an issue at all since the second attempt, and there wasn’t much reason to go to the library either.”
“Was it the underground?”
“Abandon the assumption that we have to go underground. That makes sense. After finding the Grimoire underground, we became fixated on the idea that we had to get down there somehow.
“During the second attempt, we investigated Lee Se-hyeon and failed to find an easy answer, so we went underground without even thinking it through.”
“And we were forced to escape.”
“When you think about it, A-ri died immediately when she went underground during the first attempt. We’ve never gotten a good result from going down there.
“During the first attempt, A-ri died right away. During the second, we were forced to escape without accomplishing anything. But during the third attempt, we didn’t go underground at all and learned a great deal.
“We learned that the Bell could suppress possession, and that there was a Sanctuary connected to the Ritual for the Evil God’s Birth in the mountain behind the mansion.”
As I spoke with Ga-in, I realized the hint’s true meaning.
[Abandon the assumption that we have to go underground.]
We looked at each other and nodded.
Then Seung-yeop, who had been listening nearby, spoke with a puzzled expression.
“But aren’t Jin-cheol, A-ri, and Song-i underground right now, going to destroy the Altar?”
“...”
“...”
.
.
.
“Aaaah!”
The realization hit me so hard that I screamed.
“No! Fuck, did we screw this up?”
Ga-in swore too.
“No, no, no, no! What’s going on? Did we screw up?”
“Eun-sol, calm down and think! Don’t we have to destroy the underground Altar no matter what? It’s called an Altar!”
“Wait, just wait!”
I went over our conversation with Lee Se-hyeon.
* * *
“After that, I built an Altar underground to offer back the wealth I had accumulated through His grace. I prayed there faithfully at regular intervals...”
“An Altar?”
“It is not anything so grand just because it is called an Altar. It is simply...”
* * *
“Ha! Damn it, I get it!”
“What, what do you get, Eun-sol?”
“The Apostle never ordered Lee Se-hyeon to build an Altar! Lee Se-hyeon built it himself out of gratitude. He even said so himself. It wasn’t anything grand!”
“But the Apostle told Lee Se-hyeon to keep the place secure!”
* * *
“Hmm? It is difficult to explain the Altar’s location in words. When I built it, the Apostle placed great importance on security, so the route is very complicated...”
* * *
“That was just because he was building a strange Altar to worship an evil god in a world watched by the Holy See! The Apostle was telling him not to get caught!”
A despairing realization came over me.
The underground Altar had nothing to do with the Ritual for the Evil God’s Birth. It was a place Lee Se-hyeon had built for his personal faith.
It wasn’t just a place we didn’t need to visit. According to the hint, it was a place we shouldn’t have gone.
Just as Ga-in and I were left speechless by that horrifying realization...
---Kyaaaaaaak!
A shriek began echoing through the mansion.
* Two Hours Earlier, Destruction Team
- Kim A-ri
This route was damn complicated.
I finally understood what Eun-sol meant when she said Lee Se-hyeon had described the security as tight.
How had he built such an extravagant place underground?
How much money had that man made?
I stopped thinking about it.
He was a businessman aided by an Apostle with the power of possession. If he wanted to, he could have made as much money as he wanted.
We had definitely started from the mansion.
Pulling a lever in the library led down to the underground area where the Grimoire was kept, but that strange mechanism wasn’t limited to the library.
When something in the bedroom was touched, the bed suddenly slid aside, revealing stairs that led underground.
This route was different from the one that led from the library to the Grimoire.
Despite being underground, the air was fresh, and it wasn’t dark.
There were also plenty of security systems that only opened after Lee Se-hyeon’s fingerprints or irises were recognized.
It had a completely different, modern feel from the path leading from the library to the Grimoire.
Thinking about it, Lee Se-hyeon hadn’t even known the Grimoire existed.
It seemed the path from the library to the Grimoire and the path from the bedroom to the Altar had different users.
The Apostle possessing Lee Si-woo’s body had probably used the route to the Grimoire most often.
Then perhaps only Lee Se-hyeon used the route to the Altar?
While I considered one thing after another, it was time again.
“Wait. Please stop.”
Everyone stopped, and I walked over to Lee Se-hyeon to reinforce my Suggestion with Old Blood.
Something was strange.
My Suggestion wasn’t powerful enough to completely erase someone’s sense of self.
I expected Lee Se-hyeon to resist us in some way along the way, but...
He followed our orders like a doll, to an almost unbelievable degree.
He was so obedient that Song-i had become wary of my Suggestion.
No, it wasn’t that powerful! I was surprised too!
Still, after nearly forty minutes of walking, we finally reached the Altar.
Jin-cheol looked around and spoke.
“Well, it looks like a place where you could sit down and meditate.”
“Wait a moment. Let me take a look.”
I was the only one here with knowledge of evil power.
For a long time, I examined the surroundings. There was a statue carved with a moth-like creature and cushions that seemed prepared for worship.
I carefully inspected several other sculptures and paintings as well.
...
“A-ri. Do you understand now?”
I didn’t. It was a little embarrassing.
No matter how closely I looked, the sculptures and paintings all seemed like ordinary objects.
Jin-cheol said the moth sculpture resembled the moth he had seen before dying during the third attempt, so it seemed we had found the right place...
Something was wrong.
They looked like ordinary sculptures and paintings made from knowledge a normal person had picked up somewhere.
I couldn’t feel even the slightest transcendent power.
In a sense, evil rituals were similar to modern science.
To accomplish something great, you needed great facilities.
If someone intended to carry out something as immense as the birth of an evil god, they should have needed grand equipment to make it happen.
As I fell into confusion, Jin-cheol stepped closer.
“Looks like you can’t figure it out. Let’s just use the star. We may not know what needs to be destroyed, but I think the star can destroy anything.”
“I agree. It twisted the evil god’s wings. No facility made by a mortal can withstand that star, no matter what it does.”
“Then why don’t you go farther back with Song-i?”
...
In the end, Song-i and I took Lee Se-hyeon and retreated a long way, leaving Jin-cheol behind.
Ah. Something felt wrong. It felt as if I’d overlooked something important.
Jin-cheol, protected by Song-i’s mental protection, summoned the star alone in the Altar room.
A wave that seemed to pierce the skin burst outward.
Even from this far away, the faint sensation of it was enough to give me chills. It was such destructive power.
It still amazed me that the hotel could casually hand out something so absurd. Was the hotel insane?
Could it spare a thought for the Management Bureau, people like us who had to protect fragile Earth?
If Jin-cheol ever succeeded in escaping the hotel, he would possess power comparable to a tactical nuclear weapon all by himself.
How would we control him then?
...
I stopped those thoughts. For now, I was also just a participant in this hotel.
As the ominous wave began shaking the entire underground complex, Lee Se-hyeon seemed to feel instinctive fear. He staggered backward, then suddenly ran like mad.
What?
What was that?
Startled, I ran several steps, then took flight after him.
Song-i, who noticed the change too late, gasped and ran after us.
“Too late!”
Lee Se-hyeon’s voice rang out triumphantly. He touched something on the wall.
---Bwoooong!
A chilling sound began echoing through the entire underground complex.
It wasn’t demonic power or divine power, but the power of modern science!
Lee Se-hyeon vanished in an instant, as if there had been a hidden passage somewhere. Metallic sounds came from every direction.
No! This was too much!
How rich was that bastard Lee Se-hyeon that he could build a place this insane underground?
I was close to losing my mind. When I turned away, Jin-cheol burst out of the Altar room after noticing the disturbance, looking confused.
Song-i walked over to him with the expression of someone who had made a decision.
I had to make a decision too.
Considering our physical abilities and the power of our Inheritances, only one person could get out of this place alive.
There was one small consolation.
Based on the knowledge I had gained as an agent, killing someone anywhere by any means would not automatically make them a sacrifice for the evil god’s birth.
There was a reason humans had performed complicated rituals when offering sacrifices to gods since ancient times.
If Song-i and I died in a place like this, killed not by the Apostle but by security systems, our souls couldn’t be offered as sacrifices.
In other words, the Cocoon wouldn’t be summoned immediately just because I died.
I could only hope the mansion team handled things well.
Footnotes:
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