Chapter 670 – Room 301, The Cursed Room – ‘Origin of the Species’ (14)
—
– Yu Songee
—
Early in the morning, as I was getting ready to head out, my mom looked at me curiously.
“You’re going out this early? It’s not even 7 o’clock yet… Meeting a friend?”
Back in my first attempt, I might have wittily replied in a similar situation.
I didn’t really think about it, but Ahri advised me to “avoid unnecessary conflicts.”
“Yes, I’m meeting someone a little far away. I might be out for a bit today.”
“Are you taking Pepper with you?”
“Yeah! We’re going to a parrot café!”
I made that up on the spot.
“…”
As I put on my shoes, last night’s events came rushing back.
The eerie sight of the unidentified mist crashing through the walls!
It was bizarre, but I still couldn’t pin down exactly what that phenomenon meant.
My suspicions about my parents were just as vague.
Ahri said she would check in on them, but we didn’t really discover anything significant last night.
—
As soon as I stepped outside, Ahri appeared, wearing a baseball cap pulled down low and even a mask—a clear attempt to not show off her glamorous looks.
“You’re late.”
“Hey, it’s still 6:40! I practically just stepped out after washing up—”
“Did you shower?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re playing with fire.”
“What do you—”
Ahri’s next comment was something I hadn’t even considered!
“What if Kain or Sanghyun are watching you outside?”
“W-What?!”
“Your white and fluffy body—”
“Ew! Stop saying weird things! I-I’m sure—”
“Sure about what? You think they’d stop watching just because you took a shower? What’s Kain’s personality like?”
“… What do you mean by ‘what’s Kain’s personality like?’”
“He’d be the type to watch with his eyes wide open as you shower.”
The moment I heard that, I recalled a bewildering memory from Room 206.
—
“By the way, do you know that Songi has a heart-shaped mole on her right shoulder?”
…
“How did you know there’s a heart-shaped mole on her shoulder?!”
—
Just as I felt my face heating up, Ahri naturally changed the subject.
“Our goal this time is to contact the Administration Bureau.”
“… Got it.”
“I figured out that the lower ranks of the Administration Bureau are corrupt due to our first attempt’s failure. The clan of Is probably has quite a few employees possessed by them.”
“That makes sense.”
“But not everyone has fallen. If they had, the world would be in ruins.”
Ahri hypothesized that the higher-ups, including the so-called ‘Silencer,’ were still intact, and most of the teammates seemed to agree.
In short, we needed to contact the higher-ups who knew the truth while avoiding the corrupted lower ranks.
“What about Grandpa and Jinchul?”
“They have their separate tasks.”
“Are you trying to check up on our parents?”
Ahri flinched slightly but easily let it slip.
“I’ll briefly grab a dog and head to your dad’s hospital. Let’s focus on our business.”
“… Okay.”
—
7 AM at Gangnam Station means it’s a chaotic time filled with working commuters.
At that moment, Ahri and I were sitting in a café, furiously tapping on our smartphones.
Our goal was to pinpoint the secret base of the Administrative Bureau in Seoul.
“Is it definitely in Seoul?”
“It definitely is. Not just one but several.”
“Do we have to do it manually like this? What Yu Eunsol told us—”
“Places known to outsiders are just decoys.”
Even the locations detected by the Dae Yang Group are merely disguises.
Considering it’s the Administration Bureau, it wouldn’t be strange for them to have secret bases that civilians couldn’t know about…
But how could we find such secret bases by only glancing at a G-map?
“I feel like this is a colossal waste of time!”
“Just do it. What’s so hard about tapping away on your smartphone? I told you a few conditions, right?”
“…”
“Secret bases are usually much larger than what’s visible from the outside. There are often hidden underground spaces. So—”
“There shouldn’t be any other buildings nearby.”
“Also, regarding site selection and operation—”
“Stop! Stop! I get it! But I have one question.”
“Go ahead.”
“What are we going to do once we meet them?”
“…”
That was something mentioned in a real-life meeting.
The plan to skip the lower ranks and meet with the higher-ups of the Bureau seemed logical, but how would we act once we met them?
“Brother Kain suggested we blatantly ask for cooperation,” Ahri said cautiously.
During our meeting, Kain’s opinion was taken very heavily by everyone.
To put it bluntly, if Kain said “Let’s go with A,” about 90% of the time, we’d go with A.
This time was the 10% exception, as Ahri and Grandpa, along with Jinchul, were vehemently against it.
There were good reasons behind Kain’s suggestion.
“The Administration Bureau knows about the hotel in an incomplete fashion.”
“… That’s true.”
“Plus, many participants who escaped the hotel are now part of the Bureau’s upper echelon.”
“Right.”
“If we blatantly reveal we are participants, we could say we’ve come to solve the real-world problems. Does that sound strange?”
“…”
After a brief silence, Ahri cautiously voiced her thoughts.
“I understand why Kain said that. If openly proclaiming to be participants works to get us cooperation, it could be useful not just in Room 301, but in other rooms too.”
“Exactly! Brother said the same thing!”
If it worked, it would be a brilliant strategy to use in other cursed rooms.
“It sounds plausible, but think about it. Have I ever done something like that while progressing through Floors 1 and 2?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Now, consider this from the Bureau’s perspective.”
Not our perspective, but that of the Bureau.
“The Bureau knows more about the hotel than civilians. So, the moment a participant openly reveals their identity, they’d begin to suffer from the following fear:”
“…”
“Does that mean the reality around us is false? That the entire world could be merely a false reality created by the hotel and could simply vanish like a bubble tomorrow?”
“… Kain didn’t say that.”
Ahri’s remarks had a slight twist from Kain’s opinion.
Kain’s suggestion was to proclaim we’re hotel escapees.
In other words, we’re asserting that this place is real and not admitting to it being a cursed room.
Also, I privately felt that from Floor 3 onward, this didn’t feel like a false world.
Seeing it this way, it wouldn’t be a lie to begin with.
Ahri calmly rebutted.
“I understand what you’re saying. I mean, from the Bureau’s perspective, it wouldn’t be easy to distinguish between these two groups.”
Whether it’s a reality or just participants coming from a hotel.
From the Bureau’s viewpoint, they couldn’t easily differentiate between these two.
So the mere appearance of unknown participants itself unnerved the Bureau.
“If the Bureau believed there were numerous participants among their upper ranks, they wouldn’t simply see this as a peaceful negotiation conclusion. Many times before, the process involved participants surviving after going through all sorts of conflicts and clashes worthy of multiple movies.”
“…”
“I also pondered this while progressing through Floors 1 and 2….”
“What is it?”
“I feel there might not be any participants left in the cursed room except us. Don’t you think?”
“Is it because of our blessing?”
“That’s possible. If they recognize our existence, they might come to the conclusion that ‘this is the cursed room.’”
Summarizing these thoughts, it boils down to this.
How does the Administration Bureau perceive the reality within the cursed room?
I’d never deeply considered this question before.
In any case, as the conversation progressed, I began to understand Ahri’s reasoning.
The moment we reveal we’re participants, there’s a significant chance the Bureau would realize that this world is false.
It’s hard to predict what would happen then.
“Complicated…”
“I felt something during the discussions. Kain seems to view everyone as if they are like him.”
“What do you mean?”
Ahri’s next statement was quite profound.
“What if the Bureau thinks like Kain? Well then, perhaps they wouldn’t care whether the world is real or false. They might think there’s no meaning behind distinguishing realities!”
“…”
“However, humans can’t all be like Kain.”
—
About 50 minutes later, Ahri and I located around three candidate sites.
Just as we were about to say we should go check them out, my phone buzzed with a security message.
“Eunsol?”
A lengthy message from my sister was packed with mysterious information she and Elena discovered from the chairman of the Dae Yang Group.
Ahri muttered regretfully, “Looks like there was more important information.”
“What specific info have we missed?”
“Something about what the chairman did while serving the clan of Is…”
Apologies to the deceased, but the idea of mind-controlling the masses to carry out massacres or possessing the bodies of agents seemed hardly surprising.
Brother Kain could do that while sleeping.
If the grand king of Is couldn’t do that, who could?
However, the next sentence was incredibly intriguing.
“Someone born from your small self shall obtain a great destiny.”
“…”
“One among your children destined to scream for the Three Thousand Worlds.”
“Hm….”
“Could it be that the king of Is knew that Eunsol would become a hotel participant?”
How is this even possible? Is it because of their status as a prisoner?
It’s not impossible for divine beings to foresee the future.
Not to mention, the hotel itself has blessings of foresight and similar abilities in insight.
Reflecting on it, I recalled that when Room 202 concluded, the Sea God had left a meaningful message for Eunsol.
Let’s go even further back: I thought of the sight seen by the Nebula Dragon or the endless scheme involving ‘The Lord’s End.’
For there to be such arrangements, it required foresight or awareness of destiny.
But!
“Something’s off. Like….”
I realized something was odd compared to previous examples, but I felt confused about where the oddity lay.
Ahri succinctly clarified this confusion.
“It’s strange. It’s like the king of Is has read the steps of the ‘Buddha.’”
“… That’s true.”
“Predicting the fate of an ordinary human wouldn’t be difficult for a prisoner. Look.”
Suddenly, Ahri reached out and pointed to an ant crawling across the table.
“It’s clear which direction that one is heading.”
“It’s moving straight into the corner.”
“People can read the behavior of ants easily. For a prisoner to read a person’s fate is like that. But can a person read another person?”
“Not easily.”
“Let alone, can a person read the steps of a god?”
“Probably not.”
“Exactly. That’s why it’s weird. The king of Is didn’t just see the future; he recognized that the Buddha was choosing Eunsol.”
“…”
It doesn’t mean that the existence of foresight ability is impossible.
It exists as blessings, and for a prisoner, it wouldn’t be too challenging to attain that kind of ability.
However, reading a mere human’s fate and reading the ‘choice of a Buddha’ are entirely different matters.
The latter seems nearly impossible even for a prisoner, as Ahri pointed out.
Consequently, Ahri suggested an interesting theory.
“I think the king of Is used trickery.”
“Trickery?”
“Rather than predicting the flow of the lord, meddling with the power of their influence to disrupt the stock market would be much easier.”
Predicting stock prices is difficult even for great scientists, but manipulating the stock market through influence is a crime that happens every day worldwide.
“Predicting is tough, but self-fulfilling prophecy is relatively easier.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The Bureau can’t read the choice of the Buddha. But we’ve successfully pushed the existence we desire into the hotel multiple times. Miro and I are proof of that. Could anything be impossible for a prisoner?”
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