WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 97: Room 102, Curse Room - ‘House of Horror’ Re (10)
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* Fourth Attempt
- Han Ga-in
Light blazed down from the sky. In an instant, agony tore through my body as though it had burst apart!
My eyes began to see colors they had never been able to see.
My ears began to hear sounds they had never been able to hear.
A sixth sense beyond the five, a seventh beyond the sixth, awakened without end, and a flood of information the human brain couldn't process poured in.
...
Amid that shuddering pain, I realized something.
Descent was the act of shedding one's shell.
Do you remember anything from before you were five?
No one retains memories of infancy into adulthood.
Perhaps, as infants, we hated the slippery floor that made crawling difficult.
Perhaps we felt intense rage toward our parents for feeding us tasteless baby food.
Yet weren't all those things utterly trivial in hindsight?
Even if there were a recording preserving the emotions of that time, we would only laugh, think about how cute we had been, and forget it.
In that sense, the me of infancy and the me of today were like the state before and after a shell cracked open.
As people grow, they come to understand themselves. Once they emerge from the shell of infancy and gain reason, they regard everything from before as insignificant.
... For the first time since infancy, I felt my shell cracking open once more.
I knew that from now on, I would still be Han Ga-in, yet no longer Han Ga-in.
* * *
- Son of Heaven
I opened my eyes.
The transcendent senses I had felt when I first received power from the Lord in the hotel filled me completely.
With a light kick off the ground, my body shot into the sky and the earth beneath me shattered.
The air filling the entire planet hindered my movement as though it were water.
The world was so small and suffocating.
How could humans live inside such a tiny prison?
It didn't matter.
I had shed my shell. There was no reason to grieve over the wretchedness of the past.
How should I deal with the Apostle?
There was no need to consider how difficult the fight might be.
Even an Apostle of a false god was probably nothing more than a slightly larger bug. I would grant it the dignity of a beetle.
Its possession ability was somewhat troublesome.
A few ways to stop it came to mind, but I chose a simpler method.
I reached toward the sky and lightly drew an arc.
Before long, another sun rose over the earth.
If the first sun in the sky was a merciful sun that breathed vitality into all things,
then the second sun that rose over this land today would be a sun of wrath that purified all corruption from creation.
Heat rays stretched out from the sun of wrath and burned the village to ashes in an instant.
It didn't take long for every human within several kilometers to burn to death.
The Apostle, who had been hiding somewhere in the village with some petty trick, appeared.
“What are you? How can a human have this kind of power? Did the Holy See summon an angel?”
What a ridiculous thing to say.
“You think the Holy See could summon me?”
The Apostle's body began to burn.
I had no intention of playing a bothersome game of tag with a bug, so I burned every nearby human.
With no bodies left behind, it would now return to its lowly body in that shabby world.
After glancing over the burning world, I headed for the mountain behind the mansion.
Memories of being human, still lingering in a corner of my heart, came back to me.
Ah! How weak and wretched human lives were.
They had eyes, yet were like the blind. They had ears, yet were like the deaf.
A life that couldn't properly perceive any of the countless changes in all creation was a tragedy in itself.
...
I felt an unpleasant gaze.
I raised my head.
The sky. Thirty thousand kilometers above the ground.
I sensed a satellite made by humans watching me.
Was it an artificial satellite the Holy See used to watch the world?
Disgusting. What did something like that think it could see?
I clenched my hand, and lightning gathered within it.
---Rumble!
Lightning pierced the sky from the ground and blew the satellite apart.
* * *
Beyond the door in the mountain behind the mansion lay a world that had lost its god and was racing toward its end.
The moment I crossed over, tentacles rushed at me from every direction.
I tore them away and looked around.
There were tens, no, hundreds of thousands of Otherworldly creatures gathered there.
“What is this? Are you throwing me a welcome party?”
A ridiculous voice came from somewhere.
“Monster! Please just die! God! Grant me power!”
“You're quite funny too. Do you think gathering enough chicks to fill the world would be enough to kill a tiger?”
With one gesture, a second sun appeared in the Otherworld's sky. No, the first one here.
This shabby world didn't even have a sun?
Heat rays spewing from the burning sphere began overturning the Otherworld's ecosystem in an instant.
“Ahahaha!”
This was pretty fun. I felt like loosening up a little.
With my other hand, I summoned a sword that stretched from the ground to the clouds.
I happily played with the sword for a while, until no living thing or terrain remained around me.
That should have destroyed all the Sanctuaries too, more or less.
The Apostle realized resistance was meaningless and didn't even try to run.
“What exactly are you?”
“Your speech has become a little more polite.”
“I now know that you are truly one born of heaven.
But why are you raising a sword against the one I serve?
I will believe you weren't summoned by the Holy See.
They could never summon someone like you.
If you lower your sword even now, my god will forgive you as well.”
“And if it doesn't? Do you have the power to punish me?”
“...”
“That was fun. Still, I'll send you off without pain.”
“... I don't know what kind of being you are, but it is already too late.
I have already offered many souls of high Soul Rank. The birth of the one I serve is near.”
“Ah, I had a feeling, but that makes things rather annoying.”
“So please, lower your sword...”
---Slash!
I felt no need to continue the conversation.
Still, I had suspected it, but it seemed I ultimately hadn't stopped the moth from being born.
Too many hotel participants had already died.
A-ri and Song-i had died far from the sacrificial ritual, so they probably hadn't become offerings.
But the others were the problem.
Seung-yeop and Elena had died to monsters in the mansion, so they had surely become sacrifices.
Mook-seong and Eun-sol, whose bodies had been taken, were also likely counted as offerings.
They weren't on the same level as A-ri, who had gone through the hotel twice, but the other participants' Soul Ranks had risen far beyond those of ordinary humans as well.
Normally, resolving things at this point would be impossible. Escape would be the best option.
Still, I didn't think resolution was impossible.
Why should it be impossible? Because an evil god had been born?
Not all gods were the same.
To a chick, even a newborn elephant might look like a god. But in the world of elephants, a newborn elephant was just a baby.
Could something born by devouring the remains of a dead god and lowly mortals truly be called a proper god?
* * *
When I left the Otherworld and returned to Earth, a loud commotion came from near the mansion.
Powerful waves of energy were beginning to surge from the area around it.
The Cocoon would appear soon.
Since the Cocoon hadn't been summoned yet, a better plan came to mind.
I had come prepared to fight the moth if necessary, but did I really need to give it time to become one?
Crushing a larva squirming in its mother's belly would be easier than fighting a moth.
Before carrying out my plan, I looked toward the sky and knelt as a precaution.
I pray to the Lord.
Your son is about to walk a dangerous path. Please send down your light.
...
“Huh? What? What's going on?”
“W-What is this?”
“You...!”
Song-i and Jin-cheol woke with confused looks, then froze in shock. A-ri studied me closely.
“Did you resurrect us?”
“Yes. And mind your manners.”
“... Yes. Please forgive my insolence. Resurrection... I see that such an absurd miracle isn't something only the Daughter of Heaven can perform.”
After looking at me for a moment, Song-i and Jin-cheol simply sat down, completely stunned.
Though A-ri trembled, she stood straight and looked at me with as much dignity as she could manage.
The sight amused me, so I asked, “Why do you think I revived you? Resurrection consumes a considerable amount of power even for me.”
A-ri silently looked over the situation before answering.
“The Cocoon will appear soon. I believe you're going to fight the Unborn One. You're taking the possibility of defeat into account.”
She had some sense.
“Yes. Though it has not been born, a god is still a god. I can't guarantee victory. Honestly, there's a high chance I'll lose. But if I hurt it even if I fall, its birth will be delayed.”
“And those of us outside will be able to escape.”
“So don't do anything useless. Stay quiet.”
Just before I turned and headed underground, A-ri suddenly bowed at the waist and spoke in a respectful manner I had never seen from her before.
“You who descended from heaven. I sincerely pray that you resolve this matter. After borrowing the power of a god, wouldn't it be embarrassing if you couldn't beat a single larva?”
That wasn't respectful. It was just rude.
Even after seeing me like this, she could say something so absurdly arrogant. That girl really was something.
Still, she wasn't entirely wrong.
I went underground.
* * *
A book glowing blue.
Ah, so this was the Inheritance of this room?
It appeared to be the Grimoire the Unborn One had given the Apostle.
I picked it up and examined it from several angles.
It didn't seem like an extraordinary item, but it did have a useful function.
This should be fairly useful in the hotel.
A distant voice pierced my head.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
“Are you still asking that?”
‘Why, why, why, why! Why are you tormenting me? I'll make you my servant!’
Along with those words, a vicious energy flowed out from the book.
Of course, it was nothing.
“Ha ha! You still can't let it go? But how could a wolf pup serve beneath a dog?”
‘I will kill you myself!’
* * *
It was a murky space. As I fell endlessly downward, I looked back on what had happened during the third attempt.
The moth entered the Cocoon to regenerate its deformed wings, allowing us a fourth attempt.
... Why had it done something so foolish?
If the moth hadn't entered the Cocoon itself, we would have had no way to escape.
Was it to remake its wings and create a new world?
It was trapped inside the hotel anyway. What was the point of creating a new world?
It acted as though it didn't know it was trapped in the hotel.
Was it because this wasn't the fifth attempt?
That couldn't be it.
In Room 103, Song-i obtained the Inheritance on the first attempt, and the Devourer clearly understood the hotel's system.
It was the Adversary, not the Prisoner, who only came to understand the hotel by the fifth attempt.
The Prisoner knew from the beginning that it was trapped in the hotel.
Then why did this larva act as though it didn't know it was trapped in the hotel?
There was also that strange conversation earlier.
Wasn't it excessively childish?
That larva had shouted less like a god and more like an angry child.
... I didn't know.
Even after obtaining power beyond humanity, the hotel was still full of mysteries.
In the distance, I saw the larva crawling toward me.
I should focus on the fight at hand.
Footnotes:
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