WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 107: Suspicion

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"...Therefore, we have concluded that clearing Floor 7 is close to impossible."

Max, who had been leading the presentation, wrapped it up with that conclusion.

The officials from the U.S. Climber Management Bureau and the government nodded with stiff expressions.

In truth, there had not even been any need for an in-depth analysis.

Anyone who read the Floor 7 information post uploaded by Person123 would have thought, 'Ah, this is a bit...'

Director Liam of the U.S. Climber Management Bureau glanced at Taylor, who was seated off to one side.

She too had a hard, rigid expression on her face.

The United States no longer had any reason to recklessly challenge Nightmare.

The Nightmare Project had begun with a grand objective: preserving humanity and leading the Tower climb on behalf of the United States, but...

Since Person123 appeared, that objective had long since changed.

The first clear of Nightmare was something only Person123 could accomplish.

The reason countries still climbed Nightmare now was simply for their own national interests.

In fact, from Floor 4 onward, the U.S. Climber Management Bureau had no longer been in a position to welcome Taylor's continued attempts without reservation.

Even so, Taylor had still managed to climb all the way to Floor 6, but...

No matter how they looked at it, the odds of success on Floor 7 were far too low.

Person123 had even personally singled out the United States and China in a warning.

Was there any reason to keep pushing forward?

The balance of risk and reward had now tipped completely to one side.

Maybe China would not challenge Floor 7 either.

If the United States challenged it alone and ended up losing Taylor...

It was horrifying just to imagine.

Wouldn't the wiser choice be for both sides to stop here, knowing when it was time to stop?

"Taylor, what do you think?"

Everyone's eyes turned to her.

Taylor opened her mouth.

"...I don't think there's any reason to decide right away."

As Max walked with Taylor afterward, he asked,

"Are you planning to challenge it?"

Max knew.

He knew what kind of conviction she had.

The answer that came back was exactly what he expected.

"I have to try."

"...Taylor, I don't want to say this either, but this is truly insane."

"Hasn't everything up until now been the same?"

"You know it too, don't you? Floor 7 isn't something you can compare to the other floors. Why do you think Person123 even left a warning?"

The gimmick of the body's left and right being reversed.

This was not something that could be practiced.

Not unless someone could swap the neural networks of the left and right sides of the brain, and unfortunately humanity did not yet have that kind of technology.

No matter how well someone understood it in theory, could they really adapt to that chaos on the spot?

Taylor had no idea how Person123 had done it, but he had always been an exception.

Taylor shook her head.

"I don't plan to rush into challenging it either. Still... I probably won't ever completely give up on climbing Nightmare."

After parting with Max, Taylor entered Floor 5.

Before heading to Zone 5 to hunt, she stopped by Drake's Diner.

"Oh? You're alone today."

Drake, the owner, quietly welcomed her when he saw her.

She greeted him with a nod.

As a Nightmare Climber, Taylor did not openly move around on Floor 5. In fact, she was not officially part of the Security Force either.

Still, since she often came into contact with them, she occasionally spent time with the members, and because this was usually where they met, she was acquainted with the owner as well.

"Do you still have any horned deer steak left?"

"You came at just the right time. There happens to be exactly one piece left."

Horned deer steak was the signature dish at Drake's Diner.

It was good enough that when she ate it while stressed, she could forget that stress for a little while.

Taylor took a seat in the corner where she would not stand out and waited for her meal.

Then...

Her gaze suddenly fixed on the diner entrance.

A man in a hat had walked in.

It was a familiar face.

The man spotted Taylor too and looked a little surprised.

He came over and sat in the seat across from her, his voice sounding pleased.

"So we meet here too?"

"...Hello."

Ye Tianwei.

Even if Drake's Diner was practically Security Force territory, Climbers from the Black Star Society often dropped by as well.

Even so, it was strange for the head of the Black Star Society to come here alone.

Ye Tianwei said with a smile,

"Please don't misunderstand. This is just a coincidence. It's not as if I knew where you were and came looking for you."

"I didn't misunderstand."

"That's a relief. The horned deer steak here is such a delicacy that I sneak over sometimes myself."

Taylor did not bother mentioning that she had just ordered the last one.

"Did you need something from me?"

She asked instead.

"Ah, of course. I was just wondering what you might do."

Ye Tianwei nodded and asked,

"What will you do about Floor 7?"

"..."

"I never expected Person123 to actually leave a warning. To be honest, when I read the post, I was a little happy. It felt like that person was acknowledging our existence."

Ye Tianwei spoke as chattily as if he were talking to a friend.

Taylor did not answer, but she could not deny what he said.

To be honest, she had felt something similar too.

She kept challenging Nightmare with the intention of being even the slightest help to Person123.

And there was nothing in that choice except her conviction to help humanity.

But Taylor was still human.

It felt as if the person she had been desperately chasing had glanced back at her for a moment, and she even felt a little acknowledged.

"For the record, I'm going to challenge it."

"...Don't you think you'll fail?"

"That doesn't matter, does it? If we stop climbing, then our role will be..."

Ye Tianwei smiled.

"Isn't that right? I thought you were the same kind as me, but perhaps I didn't even need to ask."

Taylor did not find Ye Tianwei's gaze very pleasant, as if he could see straight through her thoughts.

"Of course, we'll need to prepare much more thoroughly than for the other floors."

"I wish you luck."

Taylor answered curtly.

Right then, the horned deer steak she had ordered came out.

"Here's the horned deer steak you ordered."

Ye Tianwei said,

"I'll have the horned deer steak too, please."

"Huh? That was the last of it."

"Ah."

Seeing Ye Tianwei turn toward her in embarrassment, Taylor let out a small laugh and cut into her steak.

* * *

After I uploaded the information post about Floor 7, my daily life passed without anything particularly special happening.

...That said, I did spend most of my time hunting in Zone 5.

Crack!

A shard of ice pierced through a bone dragon's head.

Right now, the one controlling my body was the Demon King.

Whenever I handed my body over, all the Demon King usually did was reinforce the ice castle built in Zone 4 or sit on the throne spacing out.

Lately, though, he had sometimes been hunting monsters too.

I had persuaded him.

I told him I'd let him personally kill the Zone 5 boss.

And I said we should kill bosses quickly and expand the zone, because just like how things had been buried in Zone 4, who knew what else might turn up.

The Demon King listened, apparently not entirely uninterested.

He wandered through the fog forest, hunting monsters.

The Demon King's power put a burden on my body, but against trash mobs like these, there was no need to use it long enough for that burden to show.

Even tiny shards of ice flicked out here and there were enough to kill them instantly.

As I watched the Demon King hunt, I asked something that had suddenly occurred to me.

'Demon King, is there any chance I can learn magic too?'

Real magic, not the Tower's power.

If I could use it, then I could spam magic without a cooldown too.

The Demon King snorted.

"Do not prattle nonsense."

'Come on, don't be like that. Please teach me.'

"I have no intention of teaching you, and you cannot use it anyway. The very nature of your soul is utterly hopeless."

'...The nature of my soul?'

According to the Demon King's explanation,

the people of the world where he had lived and the people of this world had completely different properties of soul and body.

In other words, it seemed humans on Earth were fundamentally structured in a way that made them unable to use magic.

'But Demon King, you use it just fine with my body.'

"And what happens when I do?"

'Ah.'

"Your body being so pathetic that it cannot endure my power is one reason, but it is also because your constitution itself is incompatible with magic."

So that was it.

Then I wondered why there was no problem when I used magic-type skills...

But like the Demon King had said before, skills were only imitations of magic, not real magic, so that was probably why.

Anyway, it was a little disappointing to hear I could not learn it.

When the Demon King's time borrowing my body ran out,

I got my body back, hunted a little more, then exited the Tower.

"It's already one o'clock."

I took something out of Subspace.

A bag full of lowest-grade and low-grade magic stones.

They were the magic stones I had received from Billon's courier last time.

Whenever I received magic stones, I never went straight to the exchange and sold them right away. I always brought them home first and sold them later...

The reason I bothered doing that was just for appearances in front of my family.

As far as my family knew, I was only getting magic stones by clearing Easy Floor 1.

If they never saw me periodically heading out to sell magic stones, it would seem strange.

"I'm heading out for a bit."

"All right. Going to the exchange?"

"Yes."

I picked up the bag stuffed with magic stones and was about to head out through the front door when

I heard a room door open, and my younger sister hurried out.

"I'm coming too!"

"What?"

"I want to see a magic stone exchange at least once. Can I come with you?"

Without even waiting for an answer, she told me to wait ten minutes and ran back into her room.

...What was that all of a sudden?

* * *

She knew it made no sense.

But Kim Seo-a had been having strange thoughts lately.

Kim Seo-hyeon, her older brother.

Why was it that every time Nightmare difficulty was cleared, he just happened to be nowhere in sight?

When Floor 1 was cleared, he had gone out.

When Floor 2 was cleared, it happened at dawn while everyone was asleep.

For Floors 3 and 4, they had been traveling...

Floor 6 had once again been cleared during the day, when Kim Seo-hyeon happened to be out.

And this time, Floor 7 had been cleared at dawn too.

Her brother had always shown only a calm reaction whenever Nightmare was cleared.

On top of that, Person123 was a Korean man.

Could all of that really be coincidence?

...Of course it was coincidence. She knew that.

Or what, was she supposed to think he was Person123? Her brother? That guy?

If someone told her the Earth was flat, that would be more believable.

The savior who climbed Nightmare on the front lines, risking his life for all humanity.

The hero who had even taken a penalty onto himself to save every last one of the few remaining people.

Because they were family, Kim Seo-a knew very well.

Kim Seo-hyeon was the kind of person far too far removed from something like that.

Cautious, unwilling to step forward, the sort of person who would absolutely never do anything even a little dangerous...

Anyway, she knew in her head that it was absurd and that it was all just coincidence.

Still, it nagged at her, and she wanted to confirm something, anything.

So she followed Kim Seo-hyeon as he went to the exchange to sell magic stones.

They drove to the magic stone exchange.

Kim Seo-hyeon had an employee check his ID, then handed over the bag full of magic stones.

The employee took the stones out and measured their weight.

Kim Seo-a stood beside Kim Seo-hyeon and quietly watched.

She had looked it up online.

The lowest-grade and low-grade magic stones from Easy difficulty gave off a pale blue light.

The mid-grade and high-grade magic stones from Normal and Hard difficulties were a deeper blue, and only the top-grade magic stones from Nightmare difficulty were specially golden.

All the magic stones Kim Seo-hyeon had brought were pale blue.

"Lowest-grade magic stones, 11.91 kilograms. Low-grade magic stones, 9.7 kilograms."

The employee also identified them as lowest-grade and low-grade.

If Kim Seo-hyeon were a Nightmare Climber, that would have been impossible.

Because only top-grade magic stones came out of Nightmare difficulty.

They received the payment by bank transfer and left the exchange.

"Had enough sightseeing?"

"Yeah. This is interesting."

"What sudden whim brought this on..."

Kim Seo-a shook her head because even she found it ridiculous.

As expected, there was no way her brother was Person123.

* * *

After finishing the magic stone transaction, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant since we were already out.

Watching my sister eat beef like there was no tomorrow, I thought to myself,

She had never shown the slightest interest before, so why had she suddenly followed me out just because I was selling magic stones?

Did she want to check whether I was really selling the right kind?

"Is it good?"

"It's amazing."

Maybe not. Maybe it really was just a whim.

Either way, she had made me uneasy for no reason.

I ate my meat too while looking at my phone.

I was idly browsing news articles when one headline caught my eye.

- Unusual signs detected in Pyongyang, monitoring system on North Korea strengthened...

"...?"

It was breaking news related to North Korea.

But something about it did not look ordinary.

I looked up more related reports.

- This is an emergency breaking report. The unusual current now flowing within the North Korean military is highly likely to be a movement for a change in power. Our government...

...What is this?

Was a coup happening in North Korea?

Footnotes:

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