WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Irevi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 33: Tower of Trials Floor 6

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When I checked the community, there was already a ton of information about the upcoming Festival.

Apparently, people had spent ages arguing over how this fourth Festival would play out.

The Festival held three years ago had been a massive global event called the “Grand Festival.”

So people had been fighting over whether this Festival would be another Grand Festival like that one, or a regular Festival that only connected people from the same country.

Now that the information was out, the latter had emerged victorious.

This fourth Festival was a regular Festival in the same format as the first and second ones. I didn't really care either way.

Anyway, there were four notable elements in the Festival event.

First, there were Special Mini-Dungeons that you could challenge in a party. You could farm the main Event Currency through them.

Second, there were limited-time event items you could exchange for with that currency, the much-discussed Meteorstone Equipment.

Meteorstone Equipment was special gear made from materials that couldn't be obtained outside the event. It had no equipment restrictions and boasted incredible performance.

I wasn't that interested in equipment anymore, but hearing it was so hard to get made me curious.

The word “limited” was appealing in so many ways.

Third, there was a Battle Tournament where Challengers fought each other to determine a winner, but I had no interest in that.

I was stronger than other Challengers at my level, but I was nowhere near the real Rankers who'd spent years holed up in the Tower of Trials.

Of course, the top Rankers, who were guaranteed at least an A-rank position the moment they left the Tower, supposedly had enough conscience not to enter the tournament.

Even so, there was no way a Level 50 Normal Class Warrior like me could compete.

Finally, there was indirect trading and item imports through Production Class Challengers from other servers.

Among the classes available to Tower of Trials Challengers were Production Classes that had nothing to do with combat.

Blacksmiths with the Blacksmith skill, alchemists with Potion Brewing, and jewelers who could craft accessories.

The equipment made by those Production Class Challengers was far superior to regular drops or store-bought items.

One common function of Production Classes was Custom Crafting.

It wasn't anything special. You gave someone materials, and they enhanced or crafted an item for you.

The notable part was that this system still worked even on event maps where trading was impossible.

As long as I had the materials, I could get top-tier equipment made by master-level Production Class Challengers from other servers.

And if nothing else, I had more than enough Enhancement Materials and Gold.

If I could make the right connections this time, maybe I could come back with an item I'd use for the rest of my life.

The problem was that I was a hopeless loser with zero social skills who hadn't spoken to anyone in years.

“Hmm...”

Would it be a good idea to find a Non-Player Character somewhere and practice talking?

* * *

After giving it some thought, I closed the Open Community and headed out to clear the sixth floor.

Even if I wanted to practice conversation before the Festival began, it would be impossible on the sixth floor, which reportedly had no normal Non-Player Characters.

The sixth floor was an entire area made up of one massive Labyrinth.

There were more Undead than living people, and the Non-Player Characters that appeared were all people who'd lost their minds after wandering the Labyrinth for too long.

The sixth floor definitely didn't seem like an environment where anyone could stay sane for long.

“This place is fucking awful.”

I hadn't even encountered any monsters or traps yet, but I already felt like shit.

Even taking a light breath made the smell of rot sting my nose. It smelled like food left in a refrigerator for two months until it got moldy.

There were also disgusting-looking stains scattered everywhere. Getting close to them revealed different kinds of rotten smells.

The kind of smell you'd get from a drunk person's vomit while pigeons pecked at it, mixed here and there with the smell of blood.

I'd been beaten up and thrown around so much by now that I could recognize the smell of blood easily.

-Grrrr...

After walking for a few minutes, I finally encountered my first enemy.

A group of Zombies, walking corpses and the source of the rotting smell spread throughout the Labyrinth.

I'd heard in the community that they looked disgusting, but this was beyond anything I'd imagined.

Now I understood why Challengers considered the sixth floor one of the worst.

Ugh, fuck. Look at those eyes dangling out.

Each Zombie had decayed differently and had different injuries, making every single one uniquely disgusting.

I wanted to kill them and clear them out just so I wouldn't have to look at them.

-Tap!

I charged into the group with my sword and shield.

I could probably handle something like that barehanded, but I didn't want to get into a fistfight with those things.

-Crack!

I swung my shield and smashed the head of the one in front, then thrust my sword through the next one's neck.

I'd read somewhere that the sense of smell was the quickest of the five senses to tire.

By the time I'd put down two Zombies, my nose was half numb, and I couldn't smell the rot anymore.

-Slash!

I cut off the heads of two more Zombies, then aimed for the last one standing in the back, beyond the burst of critical-hit effects.

I needed to raise my Sword Mastery proficiency too, so I deliberately used a skill this time.

Double Slash, a two-hit skill that swung the sword twice in a cross shape.

As the skill activated, the blade glowed, and my body moved on its own to perform the attack.

Then something strange about the Zombie caught my eye.

Its neck was hugely swollen. Its posture made it look like it was about to throw up.

Fuck, no way. Right?

-Gweeeeeeeck!!!

“You little fuck!”

An enormous amount of blood shot from the Zombie's throat like a fountain.

* * *

There hadn't been any monsters with a pattern like that on the sixth-floor monster list in the community.

It was probably another limited-stock unique monster, extinct long ago and found only in this Tower where I was all alone.

But what the fuck? This wasn't some classic arcade shooter. Why was it firing a blood spray?

-Splash!

There was so much blood that I wanted to ask where the hell it had all come from.

Since the skill's attack sequence had already begun, I couldn't dodge and got drenched in it.

The awful rotten smell from the Zombies mixed with the smell of blood and stabbed at my nose.

No, it physically went into my nose. Fuck.

-Slash!

The attack sequence continued, and the Zombie that had fired the blood spray was sliced apart and died.

It was bad enough that the first monster I encountered was a Zombie, but one of these bastards had to be mixed in too? Wasn't my luck way too bad?

Couldn't a Minotaur that was easy to beat up, or a fresh Slime, show up for once?

“Fuck, what is this smell?”

I grumbled as I flicked off the blood. Then the blood-covered skin on my face started burning.

-Sizzle...!

What was this, acidic blood or something? Or some kind of poison?

It had pierced through the Poison Resistance I'd raised by getting shot with poison arrows on the third floor. This had to be some seriously powerful poison.

I had antidote potions in my inventory, and it hadn't entered through a wound, so I could just wash it off.

“Hmm.”

If the poison was strong enough to break through my Poison Resistance, wouldn't my resistance increase even more if I just endured it like this?

Honestly, it didn't seem like any monster on the sixth floor would threaten me just because I was covered in poison.

Should I try walking around like this?

The only problem was that I kept smelling like rotten blood, but the sense of smell got tired quickly anyway.

The smell might cling to me, but it wasn't like I'd come to the sixth floor for a blind date. What did it matter?

* * *

The blood spray the Zombie spat out was, just as I'd expected, an incredibly potent poison.

After looking through old posts from first-generation Hunters in the Open Community, I found that people had once come close to dying from it in a single hit.

Still, the resistance I'd built on the third floor had weakened that dangerous poison until it only felt a little hot.

Then again, that made sense.

On the third floor, I'd used poison arrows instead of utensils. I'd skewer White Rolls with poison arrows and eat them poison and all.

Anyway, I decided to stay on the sixth floor a little longer and raise my Poison Resistance to its limit.

The sixth floor's overall area was much larger than other floors, and it had plenty of Treasure Chests to farm, so it was perfect.

Just like on the first floor, I cleared every side quest I could to improve my stats, all while increasing my Poison Resistance day after day.

By the time my Poison Resistance had risen to the point where I could drink a bucketful of its blood without any problems...

[Regional Integrated Event: The Tower of Trials Festival will be held!]

[You may travel to the shared server through the portal.]

The long-awaited Festival event finally began, and a blue portal appeared before me.

But I didn't enter it right away.

“I should wash up first, right?”

I'd spent an entire month covered in blood and poison. How bad did I smell by now?

If I went in like this, a Challenger might mistake me for a monster and slash me to death.

Honestly, that would practically count as death by natural causes.

Footnotes:

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