Escaping the Mystery Hotel Chapter 90

『Translator: RainTL』

  ༺ Room 102, Cursed Room – ‘Mansion of Fear’ Re (3) ༻

– Han Kain

I contemplated harder about the three questions on the way to the tea table.

1. Why didn’t lie detection work on Lee Sehyun?

2. Why did he suddenly kill himself?

3. Why was it considered an escape when he killed himself?

Having decided to use Sage’s Advice, I turned to the system window. It wasn’t good at providing answers in situations where I didn’t know anything, but this time, we had several clues and lacked the wisdom to connect the dots.

We had to rely on Advice.

I calmly ruminated over the questions and a sentence appeared before my eyes.

That one sentence answered all the questions.

As soon as we arrived at the table, I explained to everyone else about the Advice.

*

“We were misunderstanding it the whole time. The fact that the ‘Enemy’ had the power to possess was something we confirmed during our first attempt.

Despite knowing this, we were under the misconception that Lee Sehyun was the Enemy.”

At last understanding what was going on, Eunsol-noona lamented out loud.

“Was Lee Sehyun possessed as well?”

“Yes. There’s a different person that used the power of the grimoire to possess him. He can steal Lee Sehyun’s body at will, which answers all our questions.

Firstly, the way he resisted the lie detection was simple. It’s very easy in fact, because the ‘real Lee Sehyun’ that was talking to us was indeed innocent. He didn’t know anything and that’s why he said no.

Secondly, the reason Lee Sehyun killed himself was inside his response itself. The ‘real Enemy’ that possessed Lee Sehyun said it in the basement, right?

‘The Vatican would then send an army.’

He just decided to give up the moment we found out about him. Killing us would just result in a bigger army coming after him, so that’s why he put it off to a later date.

Lee Sehyun is just a normal person and a puppet. The Enemy didn’t want to reveal his true identity and threw away Lee Sehyun to hide himself. 

Thirdly, as for the escape; we have confirmed it already that ‘getting away from the current threat’ was enough to be considered an escape.

Now that the Enemy has discarded Lee Sehyun and concealed himself, it will be peaceful for quite a while. He will most likely hide for 10 years or even more. In fact, he might even move to a different location. Whichever the case, we were free from the ‘current threat to our lives’, which was why it was deemed an escape.

Does that make sense to everyone?”

Everyone started to think deeply to themselves, before throwing several questions.

Unexpectedly, the first one to ask those questions was Seungyub.

“Hyung. Then who’s the real culprit behind it? Is it someone inside the village?”

“Since they can move to and from people’s bodies, it’s hard to identify them based on the ‘body they are using at that moment’. Whether it be Lee Sehyun or someone else, they are just a puppet for him.”

“I get what you mean,” Eunsol-noona added. “But shouldn’t there still be ‘an actual body’? If the Enemy is a human, they wouldn’t have been born with the power to possess others, right?”

“That’s true too, but I don’t think we can figure that out at this current moment in time.”

Following suit was Jinchul-hyung, who asked a question from a different perspective.

“About the reason he killed himself, is there a chance that it was to increase our attempts? I was worried about that the most, because our second attempt was pretty much forced to an end.”

That was something I also thought of at the beginning. Before I could say anything, Ahri rebutted his question.

“I believe that’s impossible. The Enemy becoming faintly aware of the ‘Hotel’ is a penalty of the fifth attempt. Which in turn means that it’s impossible for them to be aware of it before that.”

“Even if the Enemy themselves don’t know it, what if the Convict were to tell them?” Jinchul-hyung asked again.

This time, I replied.

“If the Convict can tell the Enemy about the Hotel, every Enemy would kill themselves at the start of an iteration to force us to escape, wouldn’t they? Because it’s going to be beneficial for them to wait out until the fifth attempt.”

“Hmm. I see. I guess it’s impossible for them to pull tricks like that.”

A question also popped up in my head in the middle of our discussion.

“It looks like the Enemy can move freely between people’s bodies. They don’t die even if the owner of the body died, so how are we supposed to kill him?

Because we need to kill him to resolve the room and get the Inheritance.”

Despite asking that out loud, my eyes were on Ahri and Grandpa Mooksung.

They were the experts so they should be better aware of everything supernatural, and as I expected, Grandpa Mooksung responded to my question.

“We’ve been against ghosts that transcend the limitations of a body many times. There are all sorts of them, but it boils down to how we can stop them possessing other bodies.”

“How does it usually work?”

“It’s different every time. Sometimes, we have to destroy the source of the magic power, or use other means to temporarily block possession to kill them in the meantime. Sometimes, we have to do both at the same time.”

Destroying the source of the magic power or stopping their ability to possess and killing them, huh…

“When you say ‘source of the power’, are you referring to the demon in the basement of the mansion? Can we even defeat them? And what would be a way to stop possession?”

“I can’t tell you the answer to that either right now,” he replied. “But we shouldn’t have to deal with the demon. We didn’t even meet the Convict of Room 101, and the Convict of Room 103 was an ally, right?

From the looks of things, it feels like we don’t have to fight against the Convict. There has to be a connection between the demon and the Enemy, right? It could be the book or an altar or a contract. Destroying that is probably our goal.

I have no idea how to stop the possession for now. We don’t even know the spectrum of his ability and the limitations yet. If he could for example possess anyone in the world at any time, it would be impossible to stop that.”

Thanks to the discussions, I was slowly starting to wrap my head around things.

Ahri marked the end of the discussion (which was rare for her to do).

“Let’s proceed with two main objectives in mind for the next attempt.

Firstly, find out the true identity of the Enemy.

Secondly, figure out how to kill him and find ways to stop his possession.”

Before everyone disbanded to our rooms, I also warned everyone.

“Let’s not touch Lee Sehyun before we figure out how to stop his possession because that’s why he forced us to an escape. He is much more cautious than anyone else we’ve met.”

The next day, we proceeded into Room 102 once again.

* Third Attempt

– Han Kain

We changed a part of our plan after a re-entry into Room 102. If we were to stay in the mansion and somehow pressure Lee Sehyun, that might connect to the ‘Enemy behind the curtains’ being pressured into killing himself again.

As such, we went to the mansion straight after arriving at the village to greet Lee Sehyun, and left behind only Miss Eunsol, Lee Sehyun’s sister, and Priest Jinchul in case anything were to happen and left the mansion.

The core of this scenario, the serial missing cases of children, was taking place inside the village. 

There was a need to investigate the village more, so we first headed to the cathedral.

…

“Do you really have no information gathered about the missing cases?”

“Sorry, Sir Cardinal. I thought contacting the police would solve it.”

“Do you think the Vatican put you in here just for you to press three buttons and ring the police?”

— Bang!

“S, sorry!”

…Why was the Cardinal harassing that poor old father?

At the very least, there was something we all realized 20 minutes into the conversation. The father / priest here, who was probably the younger version of the ‘strange butler’ that we saw in our first attempt, was a normal person through and through.

He knew nothing more about the missing cases than the villagers, and widened his eyes in surprise when we talked about grimoires and demons.

Since he really was a ‘normal father’, he must be feeling wrongfully accused of being scolded by a cardinal all of a sudden. What could a normal person do when people were going missing apart from calling the police?

However, it seemed that Cardinal Mooksung had more to say.

“Did you not hear anything when you were dispatched to this place? This cathedral was not built here for no reason! Do you not have any documents about the past?”

‘Old documents’

Only after pinpointing something did the father suddenly remember something and walk into the cathedral in search of a clue. 

Did the Cardinal remember something?

“Cardinal Mooksung. Did you remember something?”

“No. I would have told you guys if I did.”

“Didn’t you just say, ‘This cathedral was not built here for no reason?’ and request old documents from him?”

“It was just a guess,” he replied. “Think about it. Isn’t it strange how there’s a big cathedral in a place as unpopulated as this village? 

When you think about it, the Vatican in this world is similar to the ‘Administration Bureau’ in our world, yeah? Thinking about it in line with that made me come up with a hypothesis.”

“Which hypothesis?”

“I will tell you once this is solved.”

After 10 minutes or so, the priest came out with a bunch of papers.

The Cardinal asked after seeing them.

“Have you even read these before?”

Although the priest didn’t reply back, I could tell just from looking at his face, that this must be his first time touching them.

It seemed that we would have to scavenge through the documents for a while. The Cardinal ordered Sister Songee and Sister Elena to go around the village before diving into the documents with me.

*

Around 2 hours went by with the Cardinal and I reading through the papers.

— Tak!

“I knew it.”

“What do you mean?”

“This cathedral, simply put, is like an ‘Administration office’ that wasn’t maintained for a long time.”

“Can you explain that in simpler terms? I know nothing about the ‘Vatican’ in this world just like I don’t with the ‘Administration Bureau’.”

“It’s simple. Back when they built this cathedral, there had been a very dangerous set of supernatural events happening in this area. 

That’s why they built the cathedral to act as an office, and dispatched people but suddenly, those phenomena vanished and it stayed silent for dozens of years.”

“Is it similar to what happened to us in the second attempt?”

“Must be. Because of their ability to possess others, the true culprit had more than enough time in his hands and therefore must have decided to wait out dozens of years, hoping that like now, the human system would become useless over time.”

Suddenly, the Cardinal turned silent, before speaking like a government official explaining to a normal civilian.

“From the standpoint of normal people, monsters and whatnot might seem like huge problems, but from the perspective of the organization that is in charge of looking after the entire Earth, you can even say that there are too many monsters to deal with.

Think about a monster toad that killed 2,000 people in a single day and a group of heretics trying to move a whole city over to another dimension.

It becomes harder to focus on ‘trivial monsters’ that hide for dozens of years and make a person or two go missing at a time.

That is why this office became loosely maintained until a normal person like that became in charge of it.”

…A toad that killed 2,000 people in a single day? A group of heretics trying to move a whole city over to another dimension?

Awfully specific examples weren’t they?

What kind of world was I living in?

Leaving that aside, what we could gather from the documents was simple.

These papers were about the Convict of Room 102, the ‘Underground Demon’.

All the documents together talked about a myth.

Somewhere far off in outer space was a transcendent existence called the ‘Nebula Dragon’. It wasn’t stated how, but that transcendent dragon died pregnant.

If they were a normal set of mother and a fetus, the fetus would have died together, but the mother being a divine existence meant that the fetus was an equally divine being.

Despite the death of the mother, the fetus was still alive.

Forever cursing their fate of being unable to be born, they started pouring out curses of hatred unto the world.

“Is this ‘One who couldn’t be Born’ the ‘Underground Demon’ that Ahri saw?”

“Most likely.”

“She said that the demon was sealed in a place that looked like the organs of an even larger organism… but it seems that instead of being sealed, it was stuck in the womb of its mother because it couldn’t be born.”

“She got most of it right.”

“That’s true. What are we supposed to do with this information?”

“Who knows. I am actually more intrigued with what comes next.”

The story about the demon’s origin was not that long. The people that were gathering this information dozens of years ago, must have deemed this too mythical to be true.

There were much more documents talking about the missing incidents 60 years ago.

“This isn’t the first time this happened.”

“Yeah. It appears that the ‘true culprit’ is not even from this time period.”

“Is he from 60 years ago, do you think?” I asked.

“Considering the nature of their ability, they could even be from 160 years ago. At that point, you won’t even consider that human.”

“This is getting more and more difficult. We still don’t know anything about their true identity, nor about the limitations of their ability.”

“But it’s not like we wasted time.”

“Did you find something?”

The Cardinal suddenly stood up and turned to the mansion through the windows of the cathedral.

“Deacon. Do you remember the rear mountain?”

“…The place where you and I had a little scuffle?”

“It looks like there is something in there.”

*

This was pretty much everything we could gather from the cathedral.

Before leaving the building, out of habit I turned on the system window to check on Seungyub and Ahri.

— Flop!

In utter surprise I collapsed on the spot!

“What is it, Deacon? What’s going on now?”