Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability - Chapter 11

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

Chapter 11

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Latecomers (2)

Across the Climber Communication Window and every other community, interest in the Nightmare clearer and rumors about him never died down.

What level was he, what did he get as a Floor 1 reward, what grade of Mana Stone dropped on Nightmare difficulty.

People said every country’s Nightmare strike team was getting consulting from him, said he was actually a woman, said they knew exactly who he was and where he was from...

In the middle of all that, some people even tried to identify his nationality by analyzing every single word in his posts.

The Tower’s Communication Window translated everything for each user, but every country still had its own nuances and unique proper nouns.

They thought that if they found the points that could not be fully hidden through translation, they could figure out his nationality too, and some even claimed they had done exactly that.

Every possible country got thrown around, but nobody knew the truth.

Only one thing.

At this point, it was almost treated as established fact that he was an unregistered Climber who refused to reveal his identity.

[Polaris: When do you think the Nightmare clearer will challenge Floor 2?]

[Philip: Probably when the Time Limit is almost up]

[PumpkinSoup: Floor 2 should be even more hell... can he even clear it...]

All they could do was check whether he was still alive through the (1) still showing in the Nightmare Communication Window.

[Nightmare(2)]

[TheoMax: The number changed!]

[Sun: Holy shit it really did]

[SturgeonRoe: Wow, did the second one finally appear]

Then one day, when that number suddenly changed to 2.

People’s attention shifted to the second Nightmare clearer who had finally appeared.

It was exactly 92 days after the first clear of Nightmare Floor 1.

The identity was the United States. Of course, the clearer’s personal information was not disclosed, but the U.S. government did not deny the clear itself.

And as if that had opened the gates, more clearers started to appear after that.

[Nightmare(6)]

When one month remained on Nightmare’s Time Limit.

The number of Nightmare Floor 1 clearers had now reached six.

No, calling that a huge number was not right.

Over nearly one year, while more than ten thousand people had disappeared on Nightmare difficulty, only six made it.

They were survivors of hell who had returned through a 0.05% survival rate.

Two from the United States, one from China, one from India, and one of the others was presumed to be Russian.

[Cloud: So who clears Floor 2 now?]

[Ragpi: Aren't they all waiting each other out?]

[Easy]

Participants: 180,645

Time Limit: 21 years 29 days 17 hours 54 minutes 31 seconds

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 23

[Normal]

Participants: 172,783

Time Limit: 14 years 29 days 17 hours 54 minutes 31 seconds

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 16

[Hard]

Participants: 166,219

Time Limit: 8 years 29 days 17 hours 54 minutes 31 seconds

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 10

[Nightmare]

Participants: 163,489

Time Limit: 29 days 17 hours 54 minutes 31 seconds

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 2

Time kept moving forward.

Someone had to challenge Floor 2.

* * *

Kiiyaaaak-!

The Goblin Knight charged.

After dodging the mace, I slammed my fist into the Goblin Knight’s torso.

Bang!

Its armor dented slightly, and the thing got shoved back.

It hacked and coughed in pain, then started thrashing even more wildly.

Whoom! Whooom!

I dodged the mace over and over on purpose without counterattacking.

After rampaging for a while, the Goblin Knight tired out before I did and started gasping.

“Tired?”

At this point it was not even proper sparring anymore.

As a level 15, I had long since reached the point where I could overwhelm the Goblin Knight barehanded.

Two fireballs rose into the air and flew in different directions.

One blew up the Goblin Knight, and the other blew up the Crossbow Goblin that had just started to pop out.

[You have completed Nightmare difficulty Floor 1.]

[Moving to the Reward Room.]

On repeat clears, a Mana Stone showed up about once every ten runs.

That was why top-grade Mana Stones were scattered all over my Reward Room. They were all stones I had gotten as rewards so far.

After realizing they stayed there even if I did not take them out into reality, I just kept piling them up here.

[Do you want to exit the Tower?]

“Exit.”

I returned to my room.

The moment I got back, my door burst open.

“...Holy shit, you scared me!”

“Why are you so jumpy?”

It was my little sister.

I calmed my racing heart.

“Why are you home so early? School?”

“My head hurt, so I left early.”

“You come in without knocking? Want to die?”

“What are you talking about? Since when do we do that?”

Should I kill her?

She looked me up and down, then gave me a weird look.

“Why are you wearing shoes in your room? Are you insane?”

“Mind your own business. So what?”

“Mom said we should order lunch together. I want chicken.”

“...If you feel like stuffing your face with chicken, you are not sick. Why did you leave early?”

I waved my hand.

“Whatever. Order what you want and disappear from my sight.”

She frowned hard and walked out.

Damn, that startled me.

That was why I could never let my guard down.

I always entered the Tower at dawn when everyone was asleep, or when nobody was home.

Entering the Tower outside the house still felt risky. Well, the first time I entered, I did not even have room to think about that.

- Nightmare difficulty’s Time Limit has now dropped below the 30-day mark. As of now, six people have cleared Nightmare difficulty Floor 1...

I watched TV while eating chicken in the living room.

Bad news for appetite came on right on cue.

My sister silently picked at her chicken, then quickly went back to her room.

I turned off the TV and finished eating.

“...Who is going to challenge it?”

If someone challenged it, I really hoped they would succeed.

As Nightmare’s Time Limit kept shrinking, my worries had been getting deeper lately.

Over the last year or so, Nightmare clearers had increased to six including me.

That was good news, but now the real problem was right in front of us.

Floor 2.

What if, just like Floor 1, nobody could clear it again?

I still had not made up my mind.

If I had to do it, when exactly should I do it?

Should I wait until everyone else died and enter only at the very end?

Nightmare had only one month left on its Time Limit.

I did think I had prepared in my own way.

I kept doing repeat clears to maintain my senses.

I used Flame Strike and Teleport often and raised my skill proficiency too.

I looked up information on Floor 2, came up with training tailored to it, and kept doing that as well.

Yeah, I did all that, but still.

Entering a new floor was terrifying.

If it was not terrifying, that person was crazy.

Just because you risked your life once did not make it easy to risk it twice.

Truth was, I still wanted to place my hope in other people for now.

Back in my room, I lay down on the bed.

I opened the Communication Window and lurked as usual.

Then I checked the Nightmare Communication Window too...

“Hm?”

Originally, there had been nothing in the Nightmare Communication Window except the old info posts I had written.

Not that anyone had much to say to each other, but until now not a single person had chatted there.

But there was a conversation in the Nightmare Communication Window.

[Jackal: Person123, are you watching?]

[Jackal: I am the second clearer. I will challenge Floor 2 soon.]

[Jackal: Before that, I wanted to say this to you.]

[Jackal: If I had become a Nightmare clearer earlier, I would have been the first one to clear Floor 1 too.]

[Jackal: I will prove it soon. I will be the one to tell you the information on Floor 2.]

“What is this?”

The guy calling himself the second clearer was talking to me.

It sounded provocative, but I did not feel bad.

Because what he was saying was exactly what I wanted.

Normally I ignored all this stuff.

But if someone was really about to challenge Floor 2 soon, I figured it was only proper to at least cheer him on once.

I typed a reply.

[Person123: I wish you success.]

Please clear it.

I really do not want to challenge Floor 2 either.

* * *

The Nightmare Communication Window was famous as a room of silence.

The number had grown from one person to six, but still nobody talked.

So when a random conversation suddenly appeared one day, people naturally focused on it.

[Jackal: Person123, are you watching?]

[Jackal: I am the second clearer. I will challenge Floor 2 soon.]

[Jackal: Before that, I wanted to say this to you.]

[Jackal: If I had become a Nightmare clearer earlier, I would have been the first one to clear Floor 1 too.]

[Jackal: I will prove it soon. I will tell you the information on Floor 2.]

The second clearer had brought up the first clearer.

And he did it with somewhat provocative wording.

People waited for the first clearer’s response.

[Person123: I wish you success.]

At a training facility of the U.S. Tower Climber Management Bureau.

Max, visiting the facility for the first time in a while, greeted the managers and looked around at the countless structures spread out before him.

Towering pillars, and strangely shaped drones floating in the air.

It was a specially modified site that had originally been used as one of the training facilities for Hard difficulty Floor 2.

A man and a woman were jumping through the air from platform to platform, using the pillars and drones as footholds.

A manager spoke to Max as he watched them.

“Compared to Hard difficulty, we increased the distance between footholds by over two times, and reduced platform width to under 50%.”

“I see. Are those drones set up to simulate moving footholds?”

“Yes, we added those recently. Nightmare can throw anything at us.”

This place existed only for clearing Nightmare Floor 2.

Max was still doing everything he could to train Floor 1 clearers, and the two who had already passed Floor 1 were preparing for the trial here.

After some time, the man came down from the facility, wiped his sweat, and walked up to Max.

“What brings a busy guy here?”

“How have you been feeling lately, Jack?”

He was the second clearer of Nightmare Floor 1.

A legend of Delta Force, and the person Max had expected the most from the beginning.

“Always at my best. I could go into Floor 2 right now.”

“Good to hear. But I saw you posted in the Communication Window.”

Jack tossed the towel he had been using to wipe sweat.

“You came because of that?”

“He is someone who has helped us a lot. Did you really need to provoke him?”

Max knew Jack’s competitive drive very well.

Jack always craved being the best, and that was exactly why he was aiming for the first clear of Floor 2.

“It was not really provocation. I just said what I wanted to say.”

“That is what provocation is, Jack.”

Taylor approached them as well.

She was the fifth clearer of Nightmare Floor 1. Max exchanged a brief nod with her.

Among Climbers, men heavily outnumbered women.

Once levels rose, gender stopped meaning anything, but Tower Floor 1 was still a domain of ordinary people.

It was a floor where people with no abilities yet had to pass purely through their own capability, so differences in natural physical ability obviously mattered a lot.

That was why Max had never imagined a female Nightmare clearer would appear.

Of course, Taylor was not ordinary either. She had a military background and had originally been a CIA SAC operative.

“He is a helper. Not someone to waste pointless competitive ego on.”

Jack answered Taylor.

“Competition is exactly what drives humans forward. The stimulant that makes us push past limits. Ah, is that not something you can relate to?”

“It is the wrong thing for this situation. Have you not considered that your little words and actions could damage relations with a key figure?”

Jack smirked.

“He is not the type to flare up over tiny things like that. He said he wished me success, did you not see?”

Person123, the first Nightmare clearer.

Now there were more Nightmare clearers, but the achievement of being first was still unmatched.

That was why Jack wanted to prove he was superior.

Jack believed that if he had been in the first wave of Climbers, he too would have cleared Nightmare Floor 1 without any prior information.

He reached that conclusion after personally experiencing Floor 1, and his ability was high enough that it could not simply be dismissed as arrogance.

His provocative tone in the Communication Window had been a light greeting.

He wanted to draw at least one response from that person, who had never replied even once unless it was related to Floor 1 strategy.

The fact that he got a reply instead of being ignored made Jack fairly satisfied.

Max shook his head and said,

“Anyway, keep managing your condition. You will get approval for the date you requested. I came to tell you that.”

“Really? Good.”

“Are you sure this is okay? You could enter with a bit more time...”

Someone had to go first anyway, but no one was eager for Jack to volunteer himself for it.

The upper brass preferred to wait and observe a little longer, but Jack’s resolve did not budge.

“I will clear Floor 2. Just like you wanted, I will make this country the frontrunner of Nightmare difficulty.”

Time passed, and D-day arrived.

[Nightmare]

[Participants:163,367]

[Floor: 2]

[Time Limit: 22 days 14 hours 28 minutes 6 seconds]

Inside a closed chamber at the Climber Management Bureau headquarters.

With many people gathered, Jack did one final check of his body.

[Difficulty: Nightmare]

[Floor: 2]

[Level: 10]

[Willpower: 150]

[Skills: Feather Step (Rare)(+1), Hunting Time (Rare), Skin Hardening (Rare), Charge (Common+), Leap (Common)(+1), Deflect (Common), Toughness (Common)...]

Floor 2 was different from Floor 1.

Once a Climber awakened the Status Window, they could receive as much skill and item support as needed, and Jack had effectively received every investment possible.

A large number of Skill Stones and Skill Enhancement Stones, plus items that boosted Willpower.

In particular, Feather Step, a Rare passive that lightened the body, and Leap, a skill that instantly amplified jumping power, were skills the state had somehow procured specifically in consideration of Floor 2’s theme.

The U.S. had two Nightmare Floor 1 clearers, and they had put all resources into the one they judged to have higher potential.

It was a better choice than splitting resources halfway.

Now it was time to see the result.

“Good luck, Sergeant Jack Davis.”

After receiving a final salute, Jack returned the salute and stared at empty air.

[Would you like to enter Nightmare difficulty Floor 2?]

A moment later, Jack vanished.

Everyone stayed silent, tense.

About one minute passed.

Taylor, checking the Communication Window, let out a pale-faced groan.

“Ah...”

Seeing her, Max asked with concern.