WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

Chapter 1

──────

Entry

Life on easy mode.

That was my life in a nutshell.

Because I had a superpower.

Not a metaphor. A real one.

"Dad, Dad."

"Hm? Hold on, Seo-hyeon. Dad's busy."

"Dad, why don't you stop it and think? Then time won't pass."

"Nooo! Dad doesn't have much time left! I told you, stop it and think!"

When I was little, I once got seriously scolded for bothering my dad while he was playing online janggi on the computer.

Back in kindergarten, I did not know.

I thought everyone could do what I could do.

I was a kid.

My parents brushed it off as odd things an imaginative child would say.

But as I got older, I realized I was different.

Whenever I wanted, the world stopped.

People and objects in front of me froze, and time came to a halt.

Time-Stop Ability.

Still, it was not all that incredible.

It was not the broken cheat power people usually imagined. It was only half complete.

In stopped time, I could not move either.

All I could do was stay still and think.

Even so, that alone was enough to make life easy.

"Seo-hyeon, you're home? Did your midterm scores come out?"

"Yes. I missed one science question."

"Really? What about the other subjects?"

"I got everything else right."

"Hoho, that's my son! Good job~."

Studying was the easiest thing in the world for me.

It really was.

A part I did not understand while studying?

I stopped time and thought until I got it.

Too much to memorize?

Same thing. I froze time until I remembered all of it.

Slacked off and a test was right around the corner?

I just stopped and restarted time all night, then studied like crazy.

Other people's one minute, one second, I could use like a full hour.

Of course, even during tests, I was the only one without a time limit.

If I hit a problem I could not solve, I just stopped time and thought it through.

That was how my grades stayed near the very top from elementary school onward.

The ability also had endless little uses in daily life.

If I had to compare it to something, it was like the pause function in a game.

When a game is paused, the character cannot move, but the real player can keep thinking, so that comparison was more accurate.

Maybe it would have been useful in a fight too.

Not that I had ever gotten into one.

I had zero interest in physical stuff, so I never used my power for sports either.

I just grew up as a normal model student.

And today was CSAT day.

"Don't be nervous, okay? Just relax."

"Yes. I'll go."

My parents drove me to the test site.

I waved to them, both looking more nervous than I was, and walked through the main gate.

Like always, I took the exam with an easy mind and came home.

"I'm back."

After dinner, I downloaded the answer sheet and graded myself.

The result was exactly what I expected. A perfect score.

Of course, I had worked hard too.

Even without time pressure, you still had to be capable of solving everything to get full marks.

I hummed to myself and stretched.

"Seoul National Med, you're nothing."

Ah, easy. Too easy.

Did it prick my conscience that everyone else worked hard while I used cheats alone?

What was I supposed to do.

Life was unfair from the start.

And if I was born with a great power like this, why would I not use it?

My life had been smooth so far, and it would stay smooth.

I was about to open my door and go share the good news with my family.

Then everything shook.

Rumble.

I grabbed the edge of my desk and caught my balance.

I could hear my family's urgent voices outside too.

What the hell was this, an earthquake?

One this strong, here?

I did not have time to think further.

Something appeared in the air before my eyes.

[The Tower is calling the Climbers.]

[You have received the Tower’s Summons.]

[Your assigned difficulty is 'Nightmare'.]

[Easy]

Count: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes 45 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

[Normal]

Count: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes 45 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

[Hard]

Count: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes 45 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

[Nightmare]

Count: 100,000

Time Limit: 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes 45 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

[If the Time Limit is exceeded, the Tower’s Curse will descend.]

[If Easy difficulty exceeds its Time Limit, 10% of humanity will die.]

[If Normal difficulty exceeds its Time Limit, 20% of humanity will die.]

[If Hard difficulty exceeds its Time Limit, 50% of humanity will die.]

[If Nightmare difficulty exceeds its Time Limit, 99% of humanity will die.]

I just stared at the messages rising one after another, my eyes trembling uncontrollably.

* * *

November 13, 2025.

The world changed violently.

A massive quake struck across the world for a brief time.

And with it, a giant tower-shaped structure rose in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

A small number of people received the Tower’s Summons.

At least, that was how the message before their eyes described it.

Easy, Normal, Hard, Nightmare.

A hundred thousand people were chosen for each of the four difficulties.

Those who received the Tower’s Summons were called Climbers.

Each Climber could challenge only the difficulty assigned to them.

The black tower appeared in the middle of the Pacific, but it had no entrance and was just a structure no one could physically enter.

People with adventurous spirits were the first to climb.

It did not take long to discover that clearing one floor extended the Time Limit by one year.

The Tower warned humanity that a curse would fall when the Time Limit ran out.

Easy meant 10% of humanity.

Normal meant 20%.

Hard meant 50%.

...And Nightmare, the one assigned to me, meant 99% of humanity would die.

It was still only a warning, and less than a year had passed since that day of upheaval.

Governments around the world moved frantically.

Humanity had suddenly been pushed to the edge of extinction. Of course they did.

Just watching the news felt like nonstop spectacle.

Our government also urged Climbers to report themselves voluntarily as soon as possible.

They passed laws, built facilities and organizations, and promised full support for climbing the Tower.

I did not report that I had become a Climber.

I only watched the day-by-day progress through the floating text in front of me.

[Easy]

Count: 95,361

Time Limit: 9 years 237 days 11 hours 52 minutes 06 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 10

[Normal]

Count: 94,022

Time Limit: 5 years 237 days 11 hours 52 minutes 06 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 6

[Hard]

Count: 96,081

Time Limit: 2 years 237 days 11 hours 52 minutes 06 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 3

[Nightmare]

Count: 97,910

Time Limit: 237 days 11 hours 52 minutes 06 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

They said Climbers grew stronger the higher they climbed.

Like in a game, they leveled up, used skills, and gained power beyond human limits.

Easy progressed the fastest.

People said the enemy on Easy Floor 1 was just one goblin.

They had already reached Floor 10, and Easy had piled up more than nine years on its Time Limit.

Normal and Hard had reached Floors 6 and 3.

Only Nightmare still had not cleared even Floor 1.

None of that had anything to do with me.

I had absolutely no intention of climbing the Tower.

Why the hell would I?

Once you entered, you could not come out unless you cleared that floor.

In other words, fail the clear and you died.

Look at Nightmare's progress.

Out of the two thousand who had entered so far, not one succeeded. They all died.

No one came back alive, so no information had been uncovered either.

It was just throwing your life away.

Anyone who valued their life would think the same, so compared to the other difficulties, Nightmare had far fewer participants from the start.

Still, someone would succeed eventually, right?

There were still more than 200 days left on the Time Limit.

With that mindset, I focused only on my own life.

I got into medical school and continued college.

The world was changing incredibly fast on one side, but most people still lived ordinary lives.

This was not me turning away.

I was just someone who got unlucky and got picked.

Someone else would do it. Someone else...

[Nightmare]

Count: 94,936

Time Limit: 135 days 1 hour 6 minutes 32 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

[Nightmare]

Count: 92,571

Time Limit: 56 days 21 hours 18 minutes 56 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

[Nightmare]

Count: 87,920

Time Limit: 10 days 3 hours 43 minutes 23 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

.

.

.

Time passed.

The collapse deadline crept right up to us.

Amazingly, nobody did it.

- Nightmare difficulty's Time Limit is now less than a week away. The U.S. government, which stated it is considering a direct nuclear strike on the Pacific Tower...

- The number of Nightmare Climbers who still have not entered remains above eighty thousand...

Every day, the news screamed that the world might end like this.

Governments everywhere offered all kinds of benefits and urged Nightmare Climbers to challenge Floor 1, but it did not seem to work.

Korea was relatively stable, but overseas, riots and violent incidents were rising constantly.

- Holy shit, is humanity really ending?

- Not ending, 1% lives

- No, what are Nightmare Climbers even doing;

- The world is about to die and there are still over 80k who haven't entered. Selfish bastards, seriously

- If it were you, would you challenge a difficulty nobody cleared while tens of thousands got shredded? lol

- Are you a Nightmare Climber?

- Shouldn't the government track them all down and force them to challenge somehow?

- Talk sense

- Unless they self-report, if they keep their mouths shut there's no way to find them

Those were the only kinds of comments all over the internet.

"The end is coming! Those without faith will fall into hell...!"

Yesterday, I even saw strange people in the street shouting into loudspeakers.

It was the end times.

[Nightmare]

Count: 77,105

Time Limit: 3 hours 36 minutes 7 seconds

Reached Floor: Floor 1

The Time Limit reached its final day.

The number of survivors dropped sharply.

Even now, it was dropping in real time.

I understood how they felt.

They probably thought there was nothing they could do anymore.

Even then, the reached floor still did not change.

More than twenty thousand people challenged it, and nobody succeeded?

Was this a joke? Was it even possible to clear?

I kept laughing in disbelief as I looked at the numbers.

"Ha..."

99% of humanity wiped out.

About eight billion people dead.

Not everyone, sure.

Even so, that number was vast enough to guarantee the collapse of the world.

If I had not been chosen, at least I would not have had to agonize over this.

Other people could only accept death as it came.

I had one choice left, even if it was just clutching at straws.

"I don't want to die either, fuck..."

I did not want to die.

And not just die.

If I entered the Tower, I had no idea what horrible, painful death I might face.

I wanted to just wait and pray that someone, anyone, would succeed in the remaining three hours.

At the very least, I wanted to cling to that 1% chance to live.

But what would that change?

Would my family and I all survive within that tiny probability?

...That miracle would not happen.

Would 99% of humanity really die when the Time Limit ended? Could that even be real?

I tried denying reality.

But I knew.

There was no point asking what made sense and what did not.

From the day the Tower rose, common sense in this world had already twisted beyond repair.

I sat at my desk with my eyes closed for a long time.

In the end, I opened them and stood up.

I put the will I had written in advance into my desk drawer and set an alarm on my phone.

After changing clothes, I stepped out of my room. Dad, Mom, and my younger sibling were all gathered in the living room.

"...Where are you going?"

"I want to get some air for a bit."

"Okay. Don't be too late coming back."

Mom smiled weakly.

My sibling had been quietly crying this whole time.

On the TV screen, [3:15:09] was displayed in huge numbers as it ticked down, and a news anchor was speaking rapidly.

Dad spoke as if pleading with me.

"You have to come back soon. Let's at least have one last dinner together as a family."

"Yes. I'll be right back."

But I probably would not come back.

They were quick to notice things, so they did not say anything unnecessary.

I had already written it all in the letter. If I did not return, the alarm would ring on time and they would find it and read it.

It might mean nothing in a situation like this, but they should at least know why their son did not come back.

I left home and walked down an empty, quiet street.

I turned into an alley and stared ahead.

It had been a year since that day.

From here on, I was going to die.

Still, I had no other choice.

The scenery before my eyes changed the moment I muttered those words.

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