### Chapter 203 – Party Time – The Power of Incarnation (1)
—
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 95
Current Location: Floor 1, Room 105 – Room of Rest
Sage’s Advice: X]
—
It didn’t take long for me to understand my sister’s words about how Kim Sanghyun’s medical skills surpassed even the supernatural level.
“Did you say your sides hurt when you try to straighten up?”
“It’s not that my sides hurt immediately; it’s when I stretch and twist side to side—”
— Creeeak!
“Ugh!”
“It seems your side muscles were a bit tangled up, so I fixed their arrangement. How does that feel now?”
“Much better! Seriously, way better!”
With just a few uncertain words from the patient and Kim Sanghyun checking a couple of times, he quickly pinpointed where the pain stemmed from. That was impressive enough, but what shocked everyone was the scene that followed—every time he ‘healed’ someone, his hands seemed to merge with the patient’s body, leaving everyone gaping!
I may not have gone to medical school, but one thing was clear: even the best medical school wouldn’t teach something like that. It had to be a supernatural ability unique to this hotel. The miraculous benefits of healing quickly made their way to Grandpa, who complained about back pain, Seungyub, already showing signs of a hunch on his back, and Yu Songee, who had been suffering from headaches for ages.
Standing nearby, Ahri responded with fascination, “How does your hand just… go in and out like that?”
“Miss, I really don’t know. It just started happening one day.”
“Sounds like it could be useful for combat too! Just slide your hand in and pull the heart out or something?”
“That is an option.”
“Oh! Really?”
“However, it would be much more practical to pull the trigger from a distance than to get up close and personal.”
“Sure, most of the time, but there might be moments when it’ll come in handy.”
“I hope it helps.”
Next up was Lee Eunsol.
“So, you’re having a bit of trouble closing your eyelids, huh?”
“Right. Actually, didn’t you give me these eyes, Mr. Sanghyun? Did they really have to be glued on so sloppily?”
“I’m truly sorry about that. As I mentioned, most of my memories from my NPC days are gone, so I also don’t know why I gave you such a poorly glued pair back then. It shouldn’t be hard to make them look more ordinary, though.”
I hadn’t really noticed before, but Lee Eunsol seemed to be quite self-conscious about her eyes. As Kim Sanghyun started examining her, she changed her tune and began to show him more affection, even calling him “Mr. Sanghyun.”
“Mmm… Looking at the structure of your eyes, it seems like it’s something we need to think through a bit more. You mentioned you have a unique single-eye sight, right? This peculiar eye appears to have three small pupils or lens-like structures inside, almost like a special camera.”
“I heard a similar explanation from Ahri.”
“It seems that all three lenses must be exposed to activate their full potential. Because of this, you need to keep your eyes wide open much more than ordinary people do. That’s probably why I performed the procedure to widen your eyelids so excessively back then.”
“Is it hard to fix?”
“Fixing it would be easy, but there’s a chance the eye’s function might diminish afterward.”
“That’s a silly way of thinking. Maintaining the eye’s performance is definitely the priority.”
“In that case, let’s take some time to think this through. I’ll consider improvement options along the way.”
“Just saying that is thanks enough!”
—
Observing from afar, I could feel it; only a few hours had passed since his resurrection, and Kim Sanghyun had already blended in with us seamlessly. His skills as a doctor, no, a divine healer, were undoubtedly impressive enough to move all the companions. Seungyub and Yu Songee were already calling him “teacher,” and seeing Lee Eunsol start dropping the ‘Mr.’ was a good sign that there probably wouldn’t be any major issues.
With this, shouldn’t it be okay to head back to the snowy realm?
As we started moving toward the snowy landscape, however, a flood of concerns began to fill my mind.
How do we overcome the desperate need for escape that the doctor can’t hide, alongside my sister’s anxiety about it?
What exactly are the wing boots the Mysterious Craftsman is supposed to make?
What secrets are hidden in Room 104?
What could the meaning of the last hint we haven’t deciphered still be?
What schemes could the ‘Lord’ be plotting?
What does the game mean by having everyone gain something?
…
Step by step, I tried to forget all these worries as I walked.
Let it go. I must let it go.
This isn’t the time for me to worry about escape tools or the next room.
Sorry, but others will handle that concern.
Sometimes personal growth is the key to optimal teamwork.
Now is that moment.
Clearing out all the little worries from my mind, I engraved just one word deeply into my consciousness.
“Incarnation”
—
Despite coming out with such lofty resolve, I ended up spending quite a long time with no significant results. I opened the grimoire, flipping it back and forth, but the letters inside still looked like nothing but gibberish or alien language to me.
The Owl’s advice had clearly aimed at the grimoire, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of stagnation. I had a vague sense of what might be causing it.
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 95
Current Location: Floor 2, Snow Globe Land
Sage’s Advice: X]
—
I gazed at the opaque shield that always protects me.
When I first grasped the usage of the ‘filter’ power, I had to concentrate really hard to change its form. However, somehow, I had started handling it instinctively for quite some time now.
Whenever I sensed something suspicious, the filter naturally covered my view without me realizing it.
Of course, from the moment I opened the grimoire, the filter enveloped my sight without hesitation.
“Is this causing the problem?”
The state window’s filter grants me protection from vile information invading my mind.
But now was the moment to understand the great truths contained within those very vile pieces of information.
After setting aside the state window from my view, I redirected my focus back to the grimoire.
As I lifted the filter, heaviness trained my head, and an uncomfortable headache swept over me.
I forced myself to examine each letter as if deciphering an ancient script, concentrating all my thoughts.
…
In an instant, I sensed my consciousness subsiding into a whirlpool, with a maddening stream of characters piercing through my eyeballs and tearing my brain apart. At that moment, I gave in and—
“Ugh!”
Blood streamed from my eye. Have I damaged my vision? My sight wasn’t completely lost, though. It sounds ridiculous, but in this hotel, that kind of suffering isn’t a big deal. More importantly—
I just saw something.
—
When I picked up the dropped grimoire again, a phrase had clearly appeared before me.
“Accept that the unchanging self does not exist.”
I recalled a conversation I had long ago with Arima in the Room of Gates.
“The human mind is just like a flowing river. Just as river water flows, the mind flows endlessly and transforms.”
“What ordinary people consider an unchanging self is merely scooping up the river water at a specific moment and place. When scooping again the next day at the same spot and time, the river would have completely changed.”
…
I think I was starting to get it. Back then, she genuinely grasped part of the great truth contained in the grimoire. But me? Have I reached that unfathomable truth?
—
The phrase etched into my mind struck me like a hammer, unleashing a torrent of varied knowledge that had long been trapped in a vault.
“I (我) am like flowing water, never stopping even for a moment.”
What the heck does that mean?
If possession is the migration of the mind, then incarnation is the expansion and division of the mind.
For crying out loud, can you just say something understandable?!
A bizarre sensation washed over me, as if I had split into two. On one side was the me that couldn’t accept or comprehend wisdom. On the other side was the me, oblivious to the shift, starting to shed the veil of humanity.
I had no idea which of these was the true me. Perhaps this distinction itself was meaningless.
—
In the midst of confusion, cradling my head and rolling around in the snow, a bird approached.
PERO! Ah, Pero! The hotel child born from a golden egg. Surely you have many unresolved mysteries too. Do you have anything to say to me?
“Come to me.”
I heard a human voice from Pero. Has the mysterious bird born from the golden egg finally learned to speak human language? Or is it just another figment of my mind, spiraling into madness while partially grasping the wisdom of the grimoire?
“A chef must become a cow to cook steak well. So, if you become a parrot, you’ll become smarter.”
“That parrot’s speaking crazy talk, so me being the crazy one is settled, huh?”
My vision started to blur. The price of gazing repeatedly at the grimoire without the filter was beginning to manifest in blindness. The eyes will recover once I take a nap in Room 105, so that’s not a serious issue. But one thing’s for sure—I can’t afford to quit embracing the wisdom from the grimoire here.
“Alright. I’ll borrow your body.”
— Squeak!
The very moment I asked Pero to come inside—it attempted to turn around and flee. Was that little ‘talk’ from Pero really just my delusion? If it were a delusion, then why did it come to me in the first place? I didn’t know. And honestly, I didn’t care.
— Thud!
The moment I borrowed Pero’s body, the flight ended, and I plunged into the snow. I had borrowed its body dozens of times before, but even now, I couldn’t grasp how a bird flew. Shouldn’t flapping my wings lift me upward? Why does my body keep leaning backward?!
As my thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind, I crawled towards both my actual body and the grimoire scattered on the ground.
— Twitch!
—
My body twitched. It felt like my body, beaten into submission by alcohol over the winter, was stirring back to life. I gasped. An overwhelming terror, surpassing every fear I had experienced in life, washed over me.
Here I am, definitely in Pero’s body! But what remains in ‘that’?
This can’t be true! It just can’t! I am and should be one! A human can only be one!
Slowly rising, the ‘human me’ and ‘parrot me’ stared blankly at each other. At that moment, “we” or “I” realized something.
We are two, and yet we are one. It was then that I understood that my consciousness was no longer bound to either the human body or the parrot’s body.
I felt my consciousness ‘above’. Just as a puppeteer operates two puppets with both hands, I could feel my mind controlling both bodies simultaneously.
The person gazed at the parrot. The parrot looked back. The person glanced toward the hotel, and the parrot looked up at the sky. I could see my comrades running toward me from the hotel.
In that whirlwind of overlapping sight and mingled sensations, I began to feel my conscious fading away.
I understood—I might no longer just be “one.”
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