### Chapter 324 – Room 203, The Cursed Room – ‘A New Beginning’ (4)
—
– Kim Ahri
Inside the split cocoon, a grotesque creature came into view.
Its skin was red, and not a single hair was present. It had a large torso but short limbs, capable of nothing but crying out with its mouth wide open.
It was a human child. An underdeveloped fetus, really. At first, I thought it might belong to the primitive people abundant in this world.
But then, recalling the information I had heard from my companions, unease settled in. The reproductive process of the tribes in Room 203 was identical to that of humans. They bond, become pregnant, and give birth.
There was no need for such a “human production factory.”
… But then again, the thought of ‘deities’ crossed my mind.
According to the information Jinchul gathered during the first attempt, deities cannot see their offspring when it comes to relationships with primitive people.
Even if they marry and give birth, the child that emerges is just a primitive being, not a deity. If they can’t increase their numbers through reproduction, it implies that there exists a separate ‘manufacturing tool’.
Could it be that deities are being created in all these cocoons around us?
At that moment, the hornets, aware of the cocoon’s destruction, began to hover around.
While they had shown a strange non-hostility towards Miro and me, it seemed that breaking the cocoon was a clear line crossed. It was akin to entering their hive and harming their larvae.
As a massive hornet approached, mouth wide open in anger, I hastily moved forward and hid behind another cocoon.
Sure enough, despite the commotion, the monsters turned their attack directions swiftly.
— Swish!
I swung a blade of cold air toward the wings of the hornet. Its body appeared sturdy, but the wings were thin and fragile—just as I had predicted.
In an instant, its wings ripped apart, and the hulking creature crashed into the hatchery. With this, I could certainly handle a few more.
— Buzz!
The hatchery ceiling opened, and over ten hornets began to swarm in. At this point, I sensed death looming.
*
– Miro
I curled up my entire body. I hid between the writhing outer shell and the cocoon, cowering down with my hands covering my head.
Whenever you would lift a large rock from a school playground or a damp, dark area near an old house, you’d find a bunch of squirming insects underneath it. That’s basically the position I was in—a bug hiding from the world.
A funny story I heard back in school popped into my head.
They say that creatures with low intelligence, when facing a predator, don’t hide from it but rather bury their heads in the dirt.
They think they’re safe because they can’t see their predators, but surely no animal can be that dumb, right? It must be a myth.
… Or maybe it was a surprisingly realistic observation.
It might not be about intelligence at all but simply too terrified to endure their foes. And right now, I was the one in that state.
While Ahri fought for our lives against the monsters, I was cowering in this horrific place.
It scared me. I was so scared.
Why did I have to end up in such a strange place?
I’d gladly accept being looked down upon by the tribespeople like Seungyub if it meant I could start alongside them!
“Why… why am I the only one in such a place—”
As tears began to pour down my face again, a firm yet gentle arm wrapped around my head.
“I’m here with you too.”
At that moment, I realized the surroundings had quieted down. The floor was littered with the remains of over ten hornets, and Ahri was…
“Ah, Ahri! Your arm!”
“What about my arm?”
“Your arm is missing!”
“It happens in fights now and then.”
“What do you mean—”
“We don’t have time. Listen closely. I’ll forget everything I learned here, but you must remember it.”
Once the summoning ends, Ahri will lose all her memories.
“I’m listening!”
“This place is where deities are created.”
“Deities?”
“You said they descend from the heavens. It seems they create deities here, and those hornets transport them to the continent’s tribes.”
“W-Why?”
“That’s something I don’t know. But for now, you need to get inside the cocoon.”
“Get inside the cocoon?”
“Have you been wondering why the monsters haven’t harmed us up to now? I was curious about that too, but I understand now. We are regarded as deities in this room.”
I understood. Inside Room 203, our assigned identity was ‘deity,’ and this space was a hatchery for creating them. Now I understood why the hornets had been non-hostile until Ahri broke the cocoon.
Realizing this, I understood why Ahri wanted me to get inside the cocoon.
Let’s think back to what was happening in the hatchery earlier.
Once a deity inside the cocoon matures enough to move, it signals, and the hornets remove the whole cocoon and take it outside.
To escape, I could use that process. If I crawled inside the cocoon and started moving, the hornets would assume I was a completed deity and take me outside, right?
“So, you want me to hide in the cocoon and wriggle around? To get the beasts to send me out?”
Ahri’s lips curved up into a slight smile.
“Exactly. You’re smart, Miro. That’ll work. I’m sure another hornet will come and send you out. For now… I wouldn’t need to be around.”
At that moment, Ahri’s head lost strength and fell limply onto my shoulder, with crimson blood starting to stain my body.
“Ah, Ahri!”
“… It’s okay. You’ll see me again once you get outside, so don’t worry.”
“It hurts, right? You need to summon back—”
“No, just leave it. We need to check this once.”
“Check?”
“If I die, what happens to the sealed body at the mountain…?”
Ahri needed to know what would happen to her if she died while sealed in the mountain, and that was why she begged me to hold off on the summoning.
Pressing against me, I could feel Ahri’s body quickly losing its warmth.
… It felt painful.
“Don’t… waste time… go into the cocoon…”
“… Understood.”
“Second… Miro has to be… raised well…”
“W-Who’s raising who here?”
Barely managing to get to my feet and avoiding the corpses of hornets scattered around, I headed towards the torn cocoon where Ahri had ripped it apart.
“Ugh!”
The moment I looked inside the cocoon, goosebumps rose all over my body. There was a slab of red flesh—the body of a child.
This was a place that creates ‘deities,’ and Ahri had just ripped a cocoon open. If the immature child inside had still been alive, that would have been even weirder.
It was okay now. I didn’t want to curl up like an insect anymore. Ahri told me to go inside the cocoon!
“I’m so sorry, baby! But the one who needs to live is me! I need to survive today!”
After pulling out the child’s body, I crawled into the torn cocoon and curled up again. The unpleasant smell and the squishy feeling of writhing flesh wrapped around me.
Terrible, nauseating things surrounded me, but… I could bear it now.
— Buzz!
I heard a sound of monsters approaching from a distance. Maybe I could escape this miserable place!
— Crash!
“Oh?”
Just moments ago, the entire world trembled. I couldn’t even describe the sensation, but I just knew.
This tremor was entirely different from anything else that had occurred inside the hatchery. It was shaking the entire world!
Suddenly, some unknown force opened the top of the cocoon.
Startled, I looked up as the entrance, where hornets had been coming and going, tore open, revealing a clear sky—
And then, a deity looked down upon me from the heavens.
I was small and fragile.
How could a human compare to such a magnificent being?
In that moment, I understood.
The gap between me and that entity might be greater than that of a chick and a human.
I had become a candle in front of the sun.
[You are indeed a candle. But you are also a flame that cannot be extinguished even in the depths of the ocean.]
I heard a strange voice. In this place filled with fear, joy, grotesqueness, and beauty, a masked entity reached out to bless me.
The celestial being no longer appeared as a god. It simply resembled a monster akin to a stronger whale than any human.
“Who are you?”
「The judgment of positives is blocking the pathway. What deed have you committed?」
“Eh?”
What was it saying? There was too much strange noise!
Perhaps because I couldn’t understand, the celestial whale stopped talking to me.
Instead, an unfathomable force lifted me with the cocoon and moved me at an incredible speed!
It was fast! Too fast!
“Ahhhh!”
Just as I barely gathered my senses, my body was flung out of the cocoon.
Before me stood a gigantic machine whose identity I couldn’t fathom. On its front, massive letters were emblazoned, recognizable even from a distance.
“… Pride of Humanity?”
At that moment, a notification appeared before me.
「You have escaped!」
This was the last memory that remained with me.
*
[User: Han Kain (Wisdom)
Date: Day 683,615
Current Location: Level 2, Corridor
Sage’s Advice: 3]
—
– Han Kain
“…”
“…”
“…”
The corridor was filled with silence. Since having escaped the cursed room, one would expect at least some congratulatory remarks, but the situation felt too odd to celebrate.
Honestly, I had just been yanked out in a ridiculously abrupt and bewildering manner.
“What’s with the atmosphere? Didn’t we learn a lot?”
Only Ahri, who completely missed the situation, looked puzzled. As soon as she spoke, one person reacted loudly.
“Waaaah!”
Miro suddenly burst into tears and slammed herself into Ahri. It looked more like an overzealous hug than anything else, but a too vigorous hug is basically a body slam.
“Miro, did something huge happen?”
“A-Ahri! Your arm—it’s gone!”
“… My arm seems fine.”
“I said, put me in the cocoon!”
“What’s with the cocoon?”
“You said there’s no kid smarter than me in the world!”
“…”
Ahri made the most complicated expression ever.
Based on circumstances, it seemed that Miro must have summoned her and spent some monumental time with her, but Ahri’s lost all her memories from it causing a bizarre gap in the situation.
“F-First, let’s head to the table!”
*
The conversation that clashed like thunder stretched on a bit longer than expected.
The only ones speaking were Miro and me. The others had barely woken up before suddenly being ‘extracted,’ leaving them with nothing to say.
“Did you generally understand the info about the spaceship?”
“…”
“I think it’s a hypothesis, but the situation in Room 203 seems to reflect that humanity, having reached sci-fi levels, faced issues while terraforming outer planets. The entity borrowing Ahri’s body is the AI of the spaceship.”
My sister muttered, looking as if her head was throbbing.
“The traces of the ancient civilization in the mountain range were left by the spaceship that landed on the planet, which is the stage for Room 203?”
“Probably?”
“What of the machine Miro saw at the end?”
Grandpa tilted his head.
“Isn’t it just the wreckage of the spaceship?”
My sister struggled to comprehend.
“But isn’t the spaceship in the mountains? There was also an AI inhabiting Ahri’s body up there.”
I was confused too.
If the AI is in the mountains, then the spaceship must certainly be there, but what was the machine Miro encountered?
The doctor cautiously offered an opinion.
“Could it maybe be a core component of the spaceship?”
“The spaceship is in the mountains, but only a core component can be seen in the spot where Miro was?”
“Perhaps we have to take that component back to the mountain.”
“What would happen then?”
“Wouldn’t we be able to repair the spaceship? If the core component is out, the ship in the mountains must be broken now.”
Repairing the spaceship. It sounded reasonable, yet it felt ambiguous.
Just as I was contemplating using Sage’s advice to figure it out, Jinchul, who had been quiet up to now, finally spoke up.
“Everything sounds great. I get it all, but I want to talk about that Adravita fellow.”
The actions of the presumed prisoner Adravita were certainly very odd.
“What was the reason Kain woke you up in the first place?”
“I’d guess he wasn’t aiming for me. He only made a ruckus on the spaceship, and the AI chose to wake me up.”
“So hypothetically, he could have woken anyone among us. Afterward, it’s peculiar how he showed the machine to Miro. Almost as if…”
Ahri finished the sentence.
“He seemed desperate to help us. Like he was begging us to solve Room 203. Once that room gets resolved, he probably faces demise as well?”
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