Escaping the Mystery Hotel - Chapter 543
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EP.543 Episode 543 – Room 207, The Gate Room – The Fourth Trial ‘The Fallen King’ (29)
Episode 543 – Room 207, The Gate Room – The Fourth Trial ‘The Fallen King’ (29)
– Serena K. Wilde
A warm, sunny California beach.
As I was walking along the soft sand with an empty heart, I heard someone’s voice.
“Aha! You were there?”
What can I say, I just knew it the moment I saw it.
It’s a fragment.
That’s a very large piece too?
It’s surprising that such a large piece of debris remains at this point.
“who is this?”
“First.”
First?
Isn’t that a weird name?
“Oh, I’m sorry. Actually, it was Third until last week.”
“…”
“But then the First died and his fragments somehow ended up in my hands. Thanks to that, I became the First again.”
A story hidden in seemingly playful words.
He was originally the third largest fragment, and became the largest fragment after obtaining the fragment of the dead Jin Mok-gyeong.
It seems that he is a colleague of the unidentified woman who was Jin Mok-gyeong’s secretary.
I guess today is the day I die.
I knew this day would come, but it came a little sooner than I expected.
“Aren’t you surprised? Have you collected so many pieces that you can read fate?”
“…”
“Judging from your expression, that’s not the case. It seems like you’re just living your life as you please, lamenting your own fate as a bug hanging in a spider’s web.”
“That’s too much talk.”
Your tone of voice sounds like you’re deliberately scratching.
If it were before, I would have been angry, but now it’s just so-so?
That’s not exactly wrong.
“You came alone?”
“Huh? Aha! So you think of me as Ari-yang’s colleague?”
“…”
“I’m alone. There’s no one around. Not yet.”
“You seem confident.”
I won’t die easily.
“That’s not it. My abilities are far removed from combat.”
“what?”
“Miss Serena. I came here with the intention of dying for you.”
For a moment, I didn’t understand what the man was saying.
“what?”
“This is my role. To put a proper ending to the fight between the pieces. At this point, I think it would be a good ending if I were to die to you.”
It’s getting more and more absurd!
A role that puts a proper end to our fight?
What the hell is this!
At that moment, the man suddenly tilted his head.
“aha!”
“… what?”
“I think I know why Mr. Cain sent you back to life.”
“what?”
“You’ve been living alone for the past few months, and you’ve taken a step forward?”
“…”
“Swallow me, and I hope you do well in the final fight you’ve been waiting for.”
He reached out to retrieve the fragment.
Just before his hand touched her forehead, the other person spoke for the last time.
“By the way, I have a letter in my possession. Please read it.”
— Kwajik!
The last, largest fragment came into my hands.
*
The letter I opened with the thought of hearing his will turned out to be longer than I thought.
“I woke up in bed one stormy day and realized that I had become a tool of the Great One.”
I got the biggest piece of debris ever.
Thanks to this, he gained a powerful ability, ‘the power to see fate’, right from the start.
And that power foretold a miserable fate.
“I didn’t make up a name on purpose. I just gave it a number because I thought someone would need to call me by that name.”
After accepting his fate, he lived in Florida with an old man named Mukseong.
At first, he was an old man who was wary of himself and did not leak information, but five years is a longer time than you think.
“There is something called a ‘mirror’. It is the reason we were born, and it is the greatest challenge to the great ones.”
The challenge of the great.
“My grandfather said that the Great One splitting himself up was a ‘means to solve the ordeal’. It seems that Ari-yang thinks the same way.”
Her colleagues saw the reason why Han Ga-in split herself up was ‘to resolve the ordeal.’
“I think there was another purpose: growth!”
Han Ga-in’s hidden purpose, growth.
“For this, you need to understand the mirror.”
Mirrors create two major phenomena: ‘transformation’ and ‘division’.
‘Transformation’ is twisting and reassembling the original into something more powerful.
‘Division’ splits the original into countless pieces and scatters them throughout the world.
I don’t know about the former, but the latter seemed closer to a curse than a power.
“It’s not a separate force, it’s just that we split it in two for the sake of explanation. It was the transformation and division that happened to us from the beginning.”
If Han Ga-in’s goal is growth, then overcoming the curse of ‘division’ and gaining the strengthening of ‘transformation’?
At this point, a moment of doubt arose.
They say that if you transform, you gain more power, but did we gain power beyond the original?
“yes.”
Huh?
Wow, I was confused!
I was just quietly reading the letter, but who gave me this answer?
The moment I raised my head in surprise and tried to look around.
My neck wouldn’t move.
And then, the eyes that moved ‘of their own accord’ read the following contents of the letter.
“Let me tell you a funny story. My grandfather told me that Ari suffered a ‘split’. Her pieces were split and scattered all over the world.”
“That’s right. Ari split before me.”
The answer comes again.
Now I know where this ‘voice’ is coming from.
“Everyone who obtained a fragment of Ari Yang gained her memories or a part of her personality. Some people even called themselves ‘Kim Ari’.”
I was scared.
“Why doesn’t that happen to us? Haha! No, no!”
The next sentence is vaguely visible, and you can predict what it will mean without reading it… .
It was so scary.
「지랄하지 마! 한가인 이 개새끼야, 이미 깨어났잖아! 이미 우리 뒤에서 조립을 끝냈으면서, 싸움이 끝날 때까지 기다리신 거죠? 즐거우셨나요?」
Intense anger and crude profanity.
Then suddenly he started speaking formally.
Sentences that allow you to feel the author’s stormy emotions.
— Bam!
I folded the letter.
Someone other than me is controlling my body.
‘He’ began to walk slowly along the beach.
“It wasn’t fun. It was hard and painful. Because countless memories of death came together.”
He soon dipped his feet into the seawater and saw himself reflected in the lapping waves.
As the water was not calm, the beautiful face of me – ‘Serena K. Wilde’ was also distorted like an illusion.
As if I were fading away without a trace in real time… .
“You say your face is beautiful. You have an interesting personality. Oh, about the question you asked earlier. Let me tell you the answer.”
The question I asked?
“I asked you if you ever gained power greater than mine? At least you did. Even though Jin Mok-gyeong failed.”
Jin Mok-gyeong failed, but I succeeded?
It’s a strange story.
Jin Mok-gyeong was much stronger than me.
“That guy was strong because he had collected a lot of fragments. He couldn’t get over the wall until the end. If I were to express it like a martial arts novel, I would say he had a lot of internal energy but lacked enlightenment.”
An incomprehensible story.
“Until the very end, you were unable to accept the path you were on, and were trapped in the illusion of atheism that you had created for yourself. Ari had pointed this out to you many times, but it would have been better if you had taken her advice.”
…
“You’re different. You must have gained powers similar to those in the Book of Incarnation, but you learned how to use them in a completely different way than me.”
A different usage from the original, as learned by Serena K. Wilde.
Another possibility.
“Ice and incarnation. I thought that due to the nature of power, the ego would inevitably become shallow and broad. The British prince was the extreme of that. On the contrary, you gathered at one point.”
…
“The effect is a strong resistance to mental attacks? Priority over physical manipulation? That’s why the British prince was taken by you. The side effect is…. loss of possession ability. That’s why he couldn’t escape this girl’s body.”
I never explained it to you, nor did I write down my realizations in a book.
And yet this man understood everything I had built up.
As if I had been waiting for this moment.
“The purpose of the ‘Unborn One’ creating the Book of Incarnation was to escape the fate of a cursed larva. With that purpose in mind, the direction went uphill when he lost his power of ice.”
My realization is at odds with the purpose of the existence of the Grimoire.
So, this is an enlightenment that Han Ga-in could not have achieved on her own.
“But, that mountain is really high. Not bad. Thank you.”
I couldn’t resist at all.
Even though the other person directly acknowledged that ‘your enlightenment is better than mine’, I couldn’t control my body.
“Understand. I’ve been preparing for a long time.”
I am reflected in the sea water.
He reaches out to me, Han Ga-in to Serena K. Wilde.
“So, child, will you tell me what you have discovered?”
In the midst of deep despair – the last rebellion left its mark.
“I, I! I am forever! I can never be a part of you –”
A giant hand grabs me.
“Now you are me.”
This was my last memory of Serena K. Wilde.
*
“User: Han?in(?hye)
Date: 1,872 days
Current location: Santa Monica Beach, California
Teaching: ∞”
– ?
“Eww…! I’m surprised!”
It was quite dangerous.
I wasn’t too worried because I had done a lot of prep work to take down Serena in one go.
At the last moment, Serena’s pure individual skill almost caused her to lose control of her body.
Thinking back, she was a girl with considerable talent.
At this point, I decided to put my thoughts about Serena aside.
“Serena, first. You both worked hard. I won’t apologize.”
There is no need to apologize.
Because they are a part of me now.
Would anyone apologize to their own right arm?
“…Is it over now?”
“It’s over.”
A familiar voice.
When I turned around, there was Ari ‘carrying’ a wheelchair.
“Just be strong.”
“There’s a lot of sand so the wheels don’t move very well. Come on, let’s say hello to each other. This is a historic reunion between Ga-in and Ga-in.”
A being that cannot even focus properly because it has neither a soul nor an ego left.
‘Han Ga-in’.
“Here, pistol.”
“…”
It was far away.
Even though I expected this moment would come someday… .
But when that moment came, my hands wouldn’t move.
Let’s look at the ‘status window’ again.
“User: Han?in(?hye)
Date: 1,872 days
Current location: Santa Monica Beach, California
Teaching: ∞”
If you think about it, it’s strange that I even see the status window in the first place.
Since blessings are given based on the physical body, it is normal that they should not be visible when in another body.
It means a twisted blessing.
The content is also strange.
Not only are there question marks here and there, but everything from the date to the current location is completely different from the original.
It’s not even advice, it’s teaching.
The number of teachings is virtually infinite.
Yaldabaoth beyond the mirror seems to have more energy than the owl and has more time to spare?
These changes.
These distortions.
Solid evidence that I am not pure now.
Earlier, my alter ego tried to prevent the twisted one from winning in this situation.
Because I believed that only then could I achieve ultimate victory.
How about ‘that’?
At the point where it is split by the mirror, it will not be exactly the same as before looking at the mirror… .
At least my body is still the same as before, so it is less distorted than I am now.
Ari added a word, perhaps sensing my hesitation.
“… This is the note that First wrote this morning.”
“Do you have another letter?”
A phrase written on a small note.
“You lost the coin toss. Will you accept the great enlightenment?”
That moment.
I saw a sparkle in the corner of my eye.
“Teaching: ∞!”
“Teaching: ∞!”
“Teaching: ∞!”
“under!”
“what’s the matter?”
“You’re the one who’s going crazy at the end!”