Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 324
Only Krnovel
Episode 324 – Re 203, Room of the Curse – ‘New Beginning’ (4)
– Kim Ari
A hideous being was seen inside the split cocoon.
The skin is red and there is not a single hair. It has a large body but short limbs and all it can do is open its mouth and cry.
It was a human child. The fetus is not yet fully mature. At first, I thought this world was full of primitive people.
However, recalling the information I heard from my colleagues, I felt a sense of discomfort. This is because the reproductive process of the primitive tribes of Room 203 is no different from that of humans. They bond among themselves, become pregnant, and give birth.
There is no need for such a ‘human production factory’.
… Those who are not like that, ‘new faces’ came to mind.
According to the information Jincheol obtained in the first attempt, a godman cannot see descendants of godmen like himself in a relationship with primitive people.
Even if you get married and become pregnant and give birth, the child born is just a primitive person, not a new person. This means that if numbers cannot be increased through reproduction, there is a separate ‘means of production’.
Are new people being created inside the cocoons everywhere?
At that time, the wasps, recognizing the destruction of the cocoon, began to fly in, rubbing their wings.
So far, they have strangely not been hostile towards me and Miro, but destroying the cocoon seems to have clearly crossed a line. It’s like entering a wasp’s nest and harming the larvae.
The moment a huge bee approached me with its sharp mouth open horizontally, it quickly moved forward and hid behind another cocoon.
Indeed, the monsters quickly changed their direction of attack, as if they were still planning to protect the cocoon.
— Come on!
I swung the cold blade towards the wasp’s wings. The body looked quite sturdy, but the wings were thin and transparent, so I aimed for them, and I was right.
This is because the wings were torn off in an instant and the huge monster crashed into the hatchery. At this rate, you can easily deal with three or four of them, right?
— Buuuung!
The hatchery’s ceiling opened and more than 10 wasps began to fly in. At this point, I knew I was going to die.
*
– maze
I curled up my whole body. He hid himself between the writhing outer wall and the cocoon and sat down with his head in his hands.
If you lifted a large rock in a dark, damp place like a school playground or near an old house, you would see bean worms wriggling all over their bodies. My posture right now is like that of a bean bug.
I remembered a funny story I heard at school when I was young.
It is said that animals with low intelligence do not hide from natural enemies when natural enemies appear, but instead bury their heads in the dirt.
The story goes that people think they are safe when they can’t see their natural enemies, but even if they were animals, how could they be that stupid? It must be a lie.
I thought so, but it might have been a surprisingly realistic story.
Could it be that it wasn’t a matter of intelligence, but that the natural enemy was so fearful that he couldn’t bear it? I’m exactly like that right now.
While Ahri is fighting for her life against monsters, I am curled up alone in a place like this.
scary. I’m so scared.
Why am I the only one who ended up in this strange place?
Because it was okay for me to be ignored by the tribesmen like Seungyeop, I could have started out among the primitive tribes!
“why… . “Why am I the only one in a place like this?”
Just as tears were pouring down again, soft yet firm arms wrapped around my head.
“I’m with you too.”
It was only then that I realized that the surroundings had become quiet. The floor was filled with the remains of over 10 wasps, and Ari… .
“Ah, Ari! eight!”
“What’s wrong with your arm?”
“You have no arms!”
“It can happen when we fight.”
“What the hell is that -”
“I do not have time. Listen to me carefully. “I will forget all the information I got here, so Miro will have to remember.”
Once the summoning is over, Ahri loses all her memories.
“I’m listening!”
“This place is a place that creates new talent.”
“new man?”
“It is said that a god is a being who comes down from the sky. “It seems that after creating the new people here, the wasps transfer them to the tribes on the continent.”
“Why on earth?”
“I don’t know about that. “Get into the cocoon I tore faster than that.”
“Go into the cocoon?”
“Why haven’t the monsters harmed us so far? I was curious about it earlier, but now I know. “Because we are also considered rookies in this room.”
understood. The identity given to us inside room 203 is ‘new person’, and this place is a hatchery that creates new people. We learned why the wasps and hatchery workers didn’t turn against us until Ari destroyed the cocoon.
When I realized this far, I understood Ari’s words to go into the cocoon.
Let’s recall what was happening at the hatchery earlier.
After the new member inside the cocoon is mature enough to hold its own, it wiggles and makes a signal, and the wasp picks up the cocoon and moves it outside.
To escape, you can use that process. If I enter the cocoon and wriggle around, won’t the wasp decide that it is a completed cocoon and send it out to the outside world?
“You mean to hide in a cocoon and shake your body around? “For the monsters to send me outside?”
Ari’s mouth curved slightly and smiled.
“As expected, you’re smart. Miro, you can do it that way. Maybe another wasp will come and help Maze out. now… . “You can do without me.”
Ari’s head lost its strength and fell on my shoulder. The bright red blood flowing from the corner of her mouth began to wet my body.
“Ah, Ari!”
“… are you okay. “Don’t worry, you’ll see me again when I go outside.”
“Does it hurt? “Cancel the summons immediately-”
“No, leave it alone. “I have to check anyway.”
“check?”
“If I die, what will happen to the sealed body?” .”
Ari asked him not to cancel the summons as he needed to see how his death would affect him who was sealed in the mountain range.
Ari’s body, leaning against me, seemed to have lost strength, and I felt it quickly cooling down.
… It was painful.
“Don’t waste time… go into the cocoon…”
“…”
“Second… Miro… I must… raise… well…”
“Who is raising whom?”
After forcing himself to stand up, he moved towards the cocoon that Ari had torn while avoiding the wasp corpses scattered everywhere.
“Hmm!”
The moment I saw the inside of the cocoon, I got goosebumps all over my body. This is because there was a child’s body that had turned into a red-colored piece of meat in a short period of time.
A cocoon is a place that creates ‘new faces’ and Ari tore that cocoon apart. It would be even stranger if the immature baby inside was still alive.
It’s okay now. I don’t want to curl up like a bug anymore. Because Ari told me to go into the cocoon!
“I’m sorry baby! But those who live must live, right? Sister, I have to survive today!”
After pulling out the baby’s body, he went inside the torn cocoon and curled up again. A writhing mass of flesh with an unpleasant smell and a squishy texture surrounded my body.
It was a world of horrible and disgusting things that could not be explained in words… . It’s worth holding on now.
— Buuuung!
The sound of a monster flying from afar can be heard. Now we can escape this damn place!
— Coogung!
“uh?”
A moment ago, heaven and earth shook. I’m not sure I can put this feeling into words, but I just knew.
This vibration is completely different from any vibration inside the hatchery that has occurred so far. It’s the vibration of the whole world!
Suddenly, an unknown force opened the top of the cocoon.
I looked up in confusion, and this time the hatchery ceiling’s entrance through which the wasps came in and out was torn open, revealing a clear sky –
The god of the sky looked down at me.
I am small and weak.
How can a human being compare to that great one?
I knew it the moment I saw it.
The gap between me and that being may be bigger than the gap between a chick and a human.
I became a candle before the sun.
[You are definitely a candle. But you are also a flame that cannot be extinguished even in the ocean.]
I heard a strange voice. In a mysterious place full of fear and joy, strangeness and beauty, I felt a masked being reach out and bestow protection on me.
The heavenly being was no longer seen as God. It’s just a monster that resembles a whale and is stronger than a human.
“Who are you?”
「The □ of positivity is destroyed□□. “What have you done?”
“yes?”
What is he saying now? There’s too much strange noise, right?
Perhaps because I didn’t understand, the whale in the sky didn’t talk to me anymore.
Instead, an unknown force lifted me up as a cocoon and moved at incredible speeds!
fast! too fast!
“Ugh!”
As soon as I barely came to my senses, my body popped out of the cocoon.
In front of me was a huge machine whose identity I couldn’t quite figure out. On the front of the machine was written huge letters that could be read from afar.
“… the pride of humanity?”
At that moment, a notification appeared in front of me.
“You escaped!”
This was the last memory I had.
*
[User: Han Ga-in (Jihye)
Date: Day 683,615
Current location: Tier 2, hallway
Sage Advice: 3]
– Han Ga-in
“…”
“…”
“…”
The hallway was filled with silence. Since we had escaped from the cursed room, everyone would have given us their usual congratulations, but the situation was a bit strange to be happy about.
To be honest, I had to escape so suddenly and absurdly.
“Why is the atmosphere like this? “Didn’t you find out a lot?”
Ari was the only one who didn’t understand the situation and was left wondering. As soon as Ari spoke, there was someone who reacted loudly.
“Ugh!”
Miro suddenly cried and headbutted Ari. To be precise, it seems like she was trying to hug her violently, but a hug that is too intense is not much different from headbutting her torso.
“Miro, did something big happen?”
“Ah, Ariga! “Damn, my arm got cut off!”
“… my arm is fine here.”
“Put me in a cocoon!”
“What else is fixing?”
“They said there is no child in the world as smart as me!”
“…”
Ari had a truly complex and subtle expression.
Under the circumstances, it seems like Miro spent a tremendous amount of time with Ari, whom he summoned to the time zone, but it’s a strange situation where Ari doesn’t remember anything.
“Hey, let’s go to the table first!”
*
Although it happened so quickly, the conversation continued for quite a long time.
The only people who opened their mouths were me and Miro. The rest of the people woke up and were suddenly ‘escaped’ less than half a day later, so they had nothing to say.
“Did you roughly understand the information related to the spaceship?”
“…”
“It’s just a hypothesis, but it seems like the situation in Room 203 is a problem that arose during the process of humanity, which has reached a science fiction-level civilization, exploring exoplanets. “The entity that borrowed Ari’s body is the spaceship’s AI.”
My sister muttered as if she had a headache.
“Are the traces of the ancient civilization in the mountains left behind during the pioneering process of the spaceship that arrived on the planet that serves as the setting for No. 203?”
“maybe?”
“What was the last machine Miro saw?”
Grandpa tilted his head.
“Isn’t this the remains of a spaceship?”
My sister found it difficult to understand.
“Isn’t the spaceship in the mountains? “There was an AI in Ahri’s body in the mountains.”
I was confused too.
Since the AI is in the mountain range, the spaceship must also be in the mountain range, so what was the machine that Miro last saw?
The doctor carefully expressed his opinion.
“Isn’t it like a core part of a spaceship?”
“The spaceship is in the mountains, but only the core parts of the spaceship are in the place Miro saw?”
“Maybe we should take the parts to the mountains.”
“What will happen if I do that?”
“Couldn’t we repair the spaceship? “If only the core parts were missing, the spaceship in the mountain range would be considered broken.”
Spaceship repair. It seems plausible, but I’m not sure.
Just when I thought I should use some advice to find out, Jincheol, who had been quiet up until now, spoke up.
“all good. “I understand everything, but I want to tell you a little about this guy named Adravita.”
The behavior of Adravita, the presumed prisoner, is clearly very strange.
“Why did Ga-in wake you up in the beginning?”
“I think they probably didn’t wake me up to target me. “I just caused a ruckus on the spaceship, and the AI picked me and woke me up.”
“So let’s say you were going to wake up one of us. Also, it was unusual that he showed Miro the mechanical device afterwards. It’s like… .”
Ari said what his older brother was trying to say instead.
“You’re so anxious that you can’t help us. I think I’m asking you to please resolve issue 203. “If the room is resolved, won’t you also disappear?”