### Chapter 444 – Room 206, The Room of Curses – ‘The Demon King who Revives after 100 Days’ Re (9)
—
– Kim Ahri
—
In this dark and chilly world, a pale silence fell, devoid of even a whispering breeze.
My comrades, all dressed in work clothes fit for a mine and sporting headlamps, looked ready to explore a gloomy underground cave.
Every now and then, Jinchul would crank up the lamp’s brightness, but truthfully, that was as useful as trying to clear the vastness of the deep sea with a candle.
Suddenly, Eunsol, who was leading us, stopped dead in her tracks.
“Sis?”
“…”
“What do you see? I can’t see a thing with my Yakutkyung on…”
Out of nowhere, that sour smell I’d noticed earlier became even stronger.
“…”
“Sis?”
“Hey? What’s going on?”
Even Seungyub chimed in, but Eunsol continued to stare blankly into the void.
Could she have spotted some kind of research building?
Then, Eunsol finally spoke up.
“Something’s moving.”
“What? A monster?!”
“Monster…? Could it be? It’s wiggling around a lot. What could it possibly be?”
Wiggling around, huh?
“I can’t see it well. I need to look from higher up. Jinchul, lift me up.”
Jinchul, tilting his head in confusion, picked Eunsol up.
It seemed like the higher she went, the better a view she got, as Eunsol began to nod slightly, focusing intently.
This became our first big mistake.
“Can you see now?”
“Yeah, I see something that looks kinda human!”
“Human? Could it be a survivor?”
A survivor?
In an underground city cut off for 100 years?
Never mind lifespan; how would one procure food or water down here?
“It looks like a person dressed in white. It could be a researcher who survived through some bizarre means, but then again, it could just be a squirmy caterpillar that keeps wiggling and wiggling and wiggling and wiggling and wiggling and wiggling—”
“AAAAAH! S-SIS!”
Suddenly, what in the world was happening?
In mere seconds, Eunsol became ghostly pale and began to tremble all over!
As if waiting for just the right moment, foam bubbled up from her mouth, and her eyes darted left and right.
A flustered Jinchul finally set her down and tried to calm her, but Eunsol had already lost it.
“AAAAAH! This, this feels like a mental attack! Eunsol, quick, play your flute—”
“You idiot! Sis is collapsed right now!”
“W-Well, we still need her to play the flute! Sis!”
At that moment, Eunsol brought her hands to her eyes—
“Jinchul, Eunsol’s hands!”
“AAAAH! What the heck is happening to sis again?!”
With how much pressure she was applying, blood began to trickle from her tear ducts.
What was she trying to do?
Was she really planning to pluck out her own eyeballs? She’s completely lost it!
The one who was supposed to be protecting us mentally was Eunsol, and now she’s lost her marbles.
What on earth did she see?
Could seeing something break a person like this?
Is this even logical—
“Wait, no way!”
“Ari?”
“Is it possible that Eunsol saw the Demon King directly?!”
“But the Demon King is trapped underground!”
“True, but—”
Just as that thought crossed my mind, Jinchul’s expression hardened, and he raised his hand.
— SLAP!
The sound of a crisp slap echoed.
For a brief moment, Eunsol’s groans faded as her eyes cleared ever so slightly.
That fleeting clarity was just enough to conjure her flute!
“Phew, the flute’s out!”
“It’s here!”
The most powerful mental shielding tool, the flute, had arrived.
Well, kind of.
The person who needed to blow into it was still sprawled on the floor.
“Sis! Sis! Hey, if you stick it here—”
Seungyub took the flute and plugged it into Eunsol’s mouth.
“Blow! Just blow!”
“Hey! Just sticking it in her mouth doesn’t mean it’ll make a sound!”
“I-I don’t know what else to do!”
“You’ve got to blow air into it—”
— PFFF!
With that, Seungyub blew into the flute this time, but nothing happened.
The legacy had appeared, but its owner was completely out of sorts.
Thanks to this ridiculous situation, we inadvertently started conducting all kinds of experiments with the Restful Flute.
Even shoving the flute into Eunsol’s mouth yielded no response.
Thinking it was supposed to make a sound, Seungyub blew into it again, but still no reaction.
Maybe we needed to make contact with the owner, so Seungyub placed the flute in Eunsol’s hands while blowing air into it, but still nothing happened!
“AAAAAH! Does the owner have to blow it? Why’s the judgment so strict?!”
“What are we supposed to do—”
“Give me that flute!”
Once again, I shoved the flute’s mouth into Eunsol’s mouth, stretching her cheeks like a hamster ball in a futile attempt.
Do whatever it takes to get air into the flute through Eunsol’s mouth!
— SSHHHH!
“Please! That’s got to make some kind of sound!”
“Forget it! I’m pulling your cheeks off at this rate—”
“…Fine.”
“Sis!”
Did it work? Are we really in the clear?
What sounded more like a ‘SSHHH’ than an actual flute note somehow snapped Eunsol back to focus.
She looked exhausted and weary but definitely returned to her usual self.
— REEE~ LAAA!
Eunsol played a few quick notes on the flute to compose herself.
“Ugh….”
“Sis, what did you see that made you—”
“I forgot now.”
“Huh?”
“Just a vague shape, I guess. And…”
“And?”
“There was something like a train on the other side.”
“A train? There’s no way something like that would just start working now—oh wait!”
It wouldn’t make sense for a train from a city long gone to suddenly start working.
But, if we follow the route of that train, it must lead to an ‘important facility.’
“Ugh….”
“Sis, are you feeling okay?”
“My eyes and cheeks are killing me. Did I scratch my eyes? And what about my cheeks?”
Seungyub and Jinchul exchanged glances, panic written all over their faces.
—
After about 15 minutes of walking, Eunsol suddenly stopped us again.
“Did we get there already? There are no trains nearby—”
“The train is a bit further. Right now, it’s the monsters.”
“…Is that the thing that wiggled you saw?”
“Everyone, close your eyes.”
“B-But what about the path—”
Eunsol raised her flute instead of answering.
“Let’s go.”
“….”
Jinchul grasped Eunsol’s hand, I grasped Jinchul’s hand, and Seungyub held onto mine.
We trustingly followed Eunsol while holding hands.
One step, then another.
— LAAAA!
The flute’s sound tickled our ears, filling the air as if it were purifying the tainted atmosphere.
And then, something ‘wiggling’ approached.
“Ugh!”
“Don’t worry about it, just keep walking.”
“Y-Yeah….”
Wiggling.
Wiggling.
Wiggling.
Every bit of me wanted to open my eyes.
I wanted to see what that wriggly thing was right away.
What could it possibly look like?
What kind of being could it be?
I was so curious.
Wriggle, wriggle, wiggle!
As I squirmed, side by side—
— LAAAA!
“…”
This was a bizarre experience unlike anything I’d ever encountered in the Management Bureau.
Like pouring black tar into one side of a clear stream while the other side was continually purified.
For a moment, two different Ahri’s couldn’t stop yapping.
The wriggly Ahri and the one yelling for me to snap out of it.
“…”
If we’re being logical, it was probably only about a five-minute walk, right?
Yet that five minutes felt like fifty minutes or five hours.
Thankfully, every ordeal has an end.
“All right, that’s it. Everyone open your eyes.”
As we all calmed our quivering hearts and opened our eyes, the vague shape that seemed to be wriggling right next to us was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the beam of the headlamp illuminated the wreckage of a train.
“Oh, is this the train sis was talking about—AAAAH! S-SIS!”
Blood, blood, blood.
Blood streamed down Eunsol’s eyes like tears, staining her cheeks crimson.
Seungyub’s face turned white as he pulled out a box from his chest.
“Help me!”
A misty haze poured from the box.
At first, it was just smoke, but soon took on a form that was clear enough to read its intentions.
That was the realm of the Soul Box.
Soon after, a splash of red droplets and glistening flesh, along with ivory bones danced in the air, giving rise to Yumi.
She was the girl who woke up from the underground city.
“I’m gonna need some night vision goggles too.”
Jinchul quickly handed over a spare pair of night vision goggles he’d brought along.
Instead of wasting time with questions, Yumi approached Eunsol and inspected her bleeding eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“…It kinda hurts.”
Yumi poked around the area near Eunsol’s eyes for a while, and whether it was effective or not, the bleeding gradually slowed.
After finishing her first aid, she surveyed the dreary atmosphere surrounding us and forced a smile.
“This place is pretty much hell.”
“…”
“I exerted a lot of energy just now. My eyes were seriously damaged.”
Seungyub, in a panic, asked, “How long can you stay like this?”
“It depends on how much energy I have left.”
That was basically why Seungyub rarely summoned Yumi.
In the Room of Curses, there was a kind of time limitation imposed on the being within the Soul Box.
Strangely enough, this limitation didn’t exist outside the Room of Curses.
That meant it wasn’t a flaw in the legacy itself, but rather a constraint imposed by the hotel.
I had a guess about why this limitation existed.
The Soul Box had two potential uses. One could capture the souls of NPCs within the hotel to gain companions, or participants might trap their own souls to become quasi-immortals.
The time limitation probably existed because of the latter.
Just then, Seungyub spoke up.
“Is there any kind of route map inside the train?”
It was a plausible suggestion, and everyone began searching through the train wreckage as we entered.
This ended up being our second big mistake.
—
— BOOM!
“Dear passengers, the train will be departing shortly, so please take your seats.”
Before we entered, it was just a rusty piece of metal debris, yet the moment we walked in, it transformed back into a pristine train.
There was no electricity, and we had seen nothing but darkness outside, but magically, the lights turned on inside!
— CLANK! CLANK!
Finally, the train began shaking as if it were about to take off.
“What the actual–?!”
As the feeling of something absurd happening sunk in, Jinchul snapped and shouted.
“Please! At least let a monster that we could fight show up! Are we supposed to destroy this train or what?!”
— THUD!
As Jinchul yelled, he swung at the now-closed train door but it didn’t budge.
“Dear passengers, the train will be departing shortly, so please take your seats.”
Eunsol muttered in despair.
“Come on… stop with the nonsense…”
“Our train is the Hell’s Circular Train—”
Yumi, with a desperate look, grabbed my arm.
“Quick! Aren’t you some kind of agent for the Management Bureau?!”
“…So what?”
“Do something! Don’t you have secret tools or something?”
“…”
What the heck was she saying?
What about you? You’re a witch, right?
“Can’t you whip out a hidden spell or something—wait what’s that?”
— GROOOOOW!
An overpowering stench and a monstrous wail filled the air.
Clearly, this was some ghastly air being expelled by a creature of a non-human nature.
All of our eyes shifted toward the back door of the train that was approaching ‘something.’
— SCREEECH!
Slowly, the door creaked open, and Jinchul scoffed as he moved closer.
“Bring it! I’d fight even if it’s gonna cost me my life!”
Bizarrely, at that moment, I could really resonate with Jinchul’s feelings.
After all, this was no ordinary hotel where death is the end, right?
Kain could probably handle the escape part without any hassle.
If we’re gonna die, we might as well throw a punch while we’re at it!
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