Chapter: 24
Chapter 24 – Room 102, Cursed Room – ‘Mansion of Fear’ (10) FIN
By Kim Ahri
Creaaak!
I stepped through the main entrance of the mansion.
Ah, I really didn’t want to come back here again. Living as a ridiculously failed maid in this tiresome mansion was just plain boring.
But… it’s almost over now. We’re just half a step away from escape. There’s only one thing left, and wouldn’t you know it, it just happens to be the most painful task.
Not long ago, Kain had drawn the “Elder’s” attention and then took off.
As I wandered through the empty mansion, I thought back to our conversation from a few hours ago.
————————————————–
“Seriously… cut it out. What the heck are you doing with those eyes?”
“I was trying to help you since you couldn’t decide. If you just accepted it, we could have wrapped this up comfortably.”
“I have a better plan!”
————————————————–
A better plan.
Sure, there’s a bit of risk compared to the foolproof escape method of ‘immediate suicide’, but…
Honestly, you can’t just cling to the safest option in this hotel forever. If there’s something worth the risk, taking that leap is actually safer in the long run.
And that’s how I was convinced by his plan.
This was the first time I felt so alone since we entered this hotel.
It’s really quite vast. I wonder if it feels more exaggerated because I’m in a child’s body. As I kept walking, I naturally arrived at the Elder’s study.
Was it here?
My memories were hazy.
According to the ‘personality’ drilled into me by the hotel, the priest’s granddaughter came here in the past to persuade the Elder and was mentally crushed after seeing something the Elder showed her.
Then came the priest’s surrender. In return, the Elder revived his granddaughter and…
During that revival process, the memory of that ‘something’ she saw also faded. After all, blurring the memory of that event was part of the recovery process.
———————————————
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t just die. I’m saying we should do a bit more before we check out.”
“Is there something else you want to do?”
“When I saw the message about escaping Room 101, I had my doubts, but after playing that card game with you recently, I became certain.
Escaping isn’t the end of the Cursed Room. It’s just a means to an end.
We need to have at least one person escape while we repeatedly explore the Cursed Room to ultimately eradicate the ‘source of the curse’, right?
So, we need to find out more, even if we have to die in the process.”
———————————————
I was about to face perhaps the most horrible death imaginable.
Upon entering the study, I saw a chaotic mess of scattered papers.
Where was it again? My memory was a bit fuzzy. Maybe it was around here? When I pulled back the painting on the wall, a lever appeared. This part somehow felt oddly vintage.
I pulled the lever, and just like that, the bookshelf pivoted, revealing a wooden door.
Behind that door were stairs. So many that the end was out of sight.
There wasn’t even any light.
Do I really have to go down there?
I’d seen all sorts of horrors in the world, but no matter how many times, one can never get used to this kind of situation.
I descended the stairs endlessly, searching for the bottom. The end of hell awaited me.
The air coming up felt like it was rotting my lungs from deep down.
How far had I gone?
It felt like at least an hour, but I really couldn’t tell. Time gets all wonky in places like this.
Finally, at the bottom of the stairs, I saw a bluish light for the first time. Beneath that glow was a nearly rusted, crumbling metal door.
I forced it open, stepping inside – and there it was: a bluishly glowing book.
The moment I saw it, I just knew. That was it.
This would probably be the final reward of this room.
The moment I touch that, I’ll probably learn something and die a terrifying death. But after coming all this way, I can’t just turn back.
The book looked perfectly ordinary. Its cover was black, made of some unidentified leather.
Strange symbols were engraved on it.
I opened the book, and darkness poured over me.
I fell endlessly.
Into a bottomless pit—a perpetual free fall.
You could drop for ten million years and never hit the bottom in this place. Just like how there’s no location further north than the North Pole and every direction leads south, here, there’s no beginning or end, and nothing distinguishes up from down.
Every direction leads directly downwards.
Even though there should be no source of light, I could strangely see the wall shapes.
The walls were black, red, and writhing. They looked grotesque, akin to the insides of some beast.
I was just a bug falling through the entrails of an organism.
For some incomprehensible reason, my fall abruptly halted in mid-air.
Something loomed in the distance.
How far away was it? I couldn’t say. It felt tremendously far, yet its shape was clear.
Perhaps it’s closer than I assume. Or could it be too enormous to gauge? Who knows?
A writhing shape appeared. It crawled up the walls, never stopping like a bug.
Every time its limb touched the wall, it melted away, only to sprout back endlessly.
Aha, this is like watching a parasite worm its way through intestines.
The sensation of billions of bugs crawling in my stomach stirred up a wave of nausea inside me.
I nearly forced myself to think of something else.
This mansion, or rather, most of this hotel was fake.
The mansion, the mountains, the rivers… all merely a stage crafted from clay by the hotel.
But even in films, the actors on stage are real despite the facade.
There are real things in this hotel.
Why was this hotel created, anyway?
Some say it’s a process to pick heroes through trials.
Others say it’s for passing down great treasures to their rightful owners.
Perhaps, this hotel is a farm.
A hell designed to eternally trap monsters from roaming the outside world, feeding them humans as fodder to keep control.
The gaze of the writhing shape turned towards me.
Did it always have eyes? There shouldn’t be a reason for eyes in a place like this. Did it form them itself?
Someone worshipped such a thing as a god?
How ridiculous.
To an ant, even a chicken might appear as a deity. But in human hands, a chicken is just a meal.
No matter how wondrous, it’s just a pathetic, hideous creature stuck in the intestines of a far more vast being.
I felt everything in my vision crumbling away bit by bit.
I was right at my breaking point.
The moment I forced my gaze upward, something shot up from the entrails toward me.
They make me go through this horror and then call it a ‘better plan?’
I’ll have to deliver a proper punch once I get out of here.
The long night in the mansion was finally coming to a close.
You have successfully escaped!
Unapproved participant! You started at a disadvantage for clearly breaking the rules.
However, despite the circumstances, you did your best and assisted the participants at a critical moment.
A cold-blooded strategy, choosing to slay sacrificial offerings rather than the demon! But sometimes decisive actions are called for.
With this, the ritual of the mansion’s owner, stained by corruption, has failed.
You have escaped the curse, but you feel the root cause of the curse remains.
A successful escapee among your companions! Congratulations! The successful escape allows all members to return safely.
*
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
[Date: Day 8]
[Current Location: Floor 1, Corridor]
[Sage’s Advice: 0]
– Han Kain
Feeling dizzy, I got up from the ground. It felt like we were thrown out of Room 101 while unconscious and just coming to our senses again.
Looking around, I saw 7 others flailing around like me.
Elena, Cha Jinchul, Lee Eunsol, Yu Songee, and Park Seungyub. And now, there were two more people we needed to have a long conversation with.
The scenes of the miserable deaths they endured in the mansion flashed in my mind. My heart raced, and a lump formed in my throat.
Elena who was strangled, Eunsol-noona who was skewered, Jinchul-hyung who died from poison, and me, who committed suicide with a dagger. How did Seungyub meet his end?
But I pushed that gruesome recollection aside.
This was it. This was the moment.
How long had I yearned for this moment of joy, reuniting with everyone?
Today’s meal would likely turn into a river of tears. Even I could feel the lump rising and my eyes becoming moist.
By the way, one question finally found its answer.
Even if the death among us occurred at different times in the Cursed Room, we all emerged together.
Of course, this was just the beginning. We still had too many unanswered questions.
Beyond the secrets of this hotel, there were so many things we still didn’t know about each other.
As I pondered everything we need to discuss, someone approached me.
It was a familiar face I had seen throughout our time in the mansion. Her true appearance seemed quite similar to how she looked in the mansion.
“Are you up? Your name still the same? So—”
Before I could respond, an unstoppable fist came flying in mercilessly, and I found myself down on the ground again.
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