WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 114: Nightmare Floor 8 (2)

──────

'...Could it be that?'

It seemed unlikely, but the only places in this endless expanse of desert that could be called a different space were the pits the Sandworms burst out of.

They were crawling around underground before surfacing, after all...

So maybe there was a subterranean space down there?

Nothing else came to mind.

Worth trying.

Time to get inside one of those pits.

'But how do I...'

Actually get in.

The Sandworm had died before its body fully emerged, leaving it wedged in the opening like a cork.

To get inside, I'd have to deal with the carcass first.

Should I just wait for another Sandworm to burst out and use a different pit?

...No. That wastes time.

Whatever the compass number doubling every two minutes meant, the less it grew the better.

I thought it over briefly, then released time.

Boom!

First, I fired a Flame Barrage.

I concentrated the fireballs on a single point and blew the section of Sandworm blocking the pit entrance apart completely.

The ground cratered and the opening widened.

Now for the carcass still inside.

I jumped, then stopped time.

Finished charging and fired a full-charge Destruction Beam straight down into the pit.

Hissss...

Once I had cleared as much of the blocking carcass as I could.

I tried to enter the pit.

I moved in with Skin Hardening active.

Darkness was no problem with dark vision.

'Oh god.'

A revolting stench hit my nose like a fist.

I soon came face to face with the remaining chunks of carcass.

Not going to work, I decided, and called for the Demon King.

'Demon King, put up a barrier and push straight through.'

Sandworm fluid was toxic.

Skin Hardening blocked physical impacts, not chemical ones.

My Sixth Sense wasn't screaming danger, so I probably could have tanked it bare-skinned and pushed through anyway, but...

My clothes would dissolve, and handing it off to the Demon King was the cleaner option.

'Keep your power use to a minimum, please.'

- I know. Stop yapping.

The Demon King took the body.

A frost barrier wrapped around every inch of it like a suit of armor.

Rumble-rumble-rumble!

With the barrier up, the Demon King flew straight through the Sandworm carcass and down the pit tunnel.

Just how long was this thing?

It took far longer than expected before we cleared the body entirely.

"Hff."

I took the body back and moved through the now-open underground tunnel.

The sharp downward slope gradually leveled out.

...Is this the right route?

Had to be.

Carrying no small amount of unease, I pressed on, and then...

A fork appeared.

I stopped time and weighed my options.

Both tunnels looked identical from the outside.

Then I had no choice but to guess.

I went right.

The tunnel opened into what looked like a small cavern, but it was a dead end.

Hm... wrong choice?

Just as I turned to go back.

My Sixth Sense suddenly sounded the alarm.

I threw myself toward the cavern entrance fast.

Splaaash!

Green liquid poured from the ceiling.

The floor where I had been standing a moment before dissolved away.

Some kind of poison, like the Sandworm fluid?

My Sixth Sense had reacted hard, which suggested this was far more toxic.

'A trap...'

That actually felt like mild good news.

If there were traps here, something worth guarding must be nearby. The underground was the right answer after all.

I went back to the fork.

Took the left tunnel this time.

Pushed through it and hit another fork.

...What is this.

Please don't tell me it's a maze.

[2,048]

I went right.

Hit a dead end not far in.

I clicked my tongue. Without stepping into the cavern, I turned back.

Left.

Another fork, the third one.

Surely right this time, I thought, and picked right again, but...

Another dead end.

...I really can never catch a break on Nightmare floors.

Turned back and took the left at the third fork too.

But what was with all these forks.

The traps were flat for Nightmare difficulty, and nothing seemed to be happening. I started wondering if anything was even progressing.

Right around when that thought crossed my mind.

"Oh."

This time, instead of a fork, a wide open space appeared.

And there was something in it.

'...A puzzle?'

Right in the middle of the cavern floor.

A large rectangular frame, and scattered beside it were boulder-sized pieces shaped like puzzle pieces.

Beyond the tunnel I had come through, countless other tunnels honeycombed the cavern walls in every direction.

I moved closer.

The stone pieces had pictures carved into them. Definitely a puzzle.

'They want me to solve this?'

Completely out of nowhere, and honestly absurd.

...Then again, Floor 3 had a cube. Maybe nothing should surprise me anymore.

Either way, there was no point dragging my feet.

I got ready to solve it immediately.

I stopped time and counted. A hundred-piece puzzle in total.

Released time and started looking over the pieces, each one nearly as big as my body.

Rumble...!

A vibration.

A Sandworm burst out of one of the cavern tunnels without warning.

...Now what?

Boom!

I blew its head apart before its body could fully emerge.

Dealt with it fast, then turned my attention back to the puzzle.

Let's see.

I started moving the pieces one by one.

First I spread them all out on the floor so I could see everything at a glance.

Far faster to do it that way than to work randomly.

'Corners first.'

I stopped time again and went looking for the corner pieces.

Fitting them in one by one.

Rumble...

A vibration, and another Sandworm came out of a different tunnel. Again?

I blew that one's head off too and got back to the puzzle.

But a moment later, more vibrations.

The Sandworms kept coming at short intervals.

'For the love of...'

What were they even trying to do.

Just interrupt me endlessly?

At this rate I couldn't focus on the puzzle properly.

Time for the Demon King again.

'Demon King, can you freeze all the tunnels shut? As solid as you can manage.'

Whoooosh-!

Demon King-emon obliged and froze every tunnel entrance.

With the Sandworms no longer a concern, I threw myself into the puzzle.

Thud.

Shifting the massive pieces into place one by one.

Not difficult, but with a hundred pieces, it was going to take time regardless.

There was no time limit like on Floor 3, at least.

Still, I felt anxious.

Because...

[131,072]

The compass number kept ballooning exponentially.

I stopped and released time in cycles to save every second I could.

Once enough of the puzzle came together I could make out the picture...

An antlion?

The image forming on the pieces was a monster shaped like an antlion.

Whatever it was, I kept going.

And after quite a long stretch of time...

'...Done!'

The last piece finally clicked into place.

Flash!

The completed puzzle glowed faintly for a moment, then went dark.

I stared at what I had assembled.

An antlion.

And on the antlion's body, a web of lines like a maze?

Not sure what to make of that.

[33,554,432]

The compass had blown past thirty million.

I had worked as fast as I possibly could, but it had still taken over twenty minutes.

Doubling at a constant rate was brutal.

What on earth could this number mean...

Not knowing made the unease grow worse with every passing second.

I looked around.

...Now what, exactly?

I had finished the puzzle, but nothing had changed beyond that brief flash of light.

The one thing that stood out was the maze drawn over the antlion...

Was that supposed to mean something?

The maze started at the antlion's mouth and ended at a picture of a heart.

No idea what it meant.

I stopped time and worked out the path through the maze.

Just in case, I memorized the entire route. Felt like it took several hours at subjective speed.

Released time. I was just starting to think about heading back outside.

Rumble-

A vibration started up.

Nothing like the Sandworms before. This was colossal.

"...!"

The Sixth Sense alarm.

From below.

'Demon King!'

I switched immediately.

The Demon King wrapped the body in a barrier like before.

And then, right after that.

...Rumble!

The ground heaved upward and slammed my body toward the ceiling.

The barrier held off the impact, but my body kept getting pushed higher.

Something enormous was rising from underground.

That was all I could tell.

"Tch."

Craaash!

The Demon King threw a small blizzard around the body and drilled straight up through the ceiling.

Punched all the way out to the surface.

Flying high in the sky, I looked down and...

'...What the hell.'

What is that?

The desert was convulsing.

Sand was being sucked inward from all directions toward a single point.

Just like an ant trap.

Roaaaaar-

The shape that emerged from the sand was... a colossal antlion.

No, colossal wasn't even close. This thing was absurd, a creature on a scale that broke every category.

The Sandworm carcasses were all being drawn into the antlion's maw.

Sandworms that had been the size of skyscrapers looked like actual ants next to this thing.

I knew immediately.

This was the Floor 8 boss.

'But what the...'

Was this really fair?

The largest monster I had ever seen was the Frozen Hydra in Zone 4.

This thing was at least ten times bigger.

It was genuinely beyond comprehension.

'Demon King, body please.'

I took the body back from the Demon King.

Stopped time and fired a full-charge Destruction Beam downward.

Aimed for the antlion's head, but...

...Roaaaaar!

The antlion let out a shriek loud enough to burst eardrums.

Fluid gushed out like a waterfall from where the beam had bored in.

The attack landed.

It landed, but...

The thing was so enormous that even the Destruction Beam felt like pricking it with a needle.

Killing it this way would take an eternity.

Stopped time again.

'This doesn't add up...?'

Something this monstrously large is the boss? On Floor 8?

The only reason I was even considering grinding it down was because it was me.

For any other Nightmare climber, this would be completely unwinnable.

No, they would never even make it to the surface. They would just get swallowed underground... wait.

A thought clicked into place.

'The maze.'

Could it be that maze picture...?

Was it a map of the antlion's insides?

And the heart at the destination was its weak point?

That would make sense.

Not killing it the conventional way, but getting inside its body and going for the weak point directly.

'So getting swallowed was always supposed to be part of it.'

In that case I just had to get into the antlion's mouth right now, but...

How long would that take?

The compass number was nagging at me hard.

I had the maze memorized, but I had no idea how long it would actually take to reach the weak point.

'...Demon King.'

I asked.

'How long do you think it would take to bring this thing down?'

The boss appearing meant we were probably near the end...

Might it be faster to just let the Demon King go all out and finish it off?

If that was possible.

- Can I push a little hard?

'Just not to the point of overloading...'

- Then hand it over.

I handed over the body immediately.

The Demon King looked down at the antlion and brought both hands together.

And then...

Whoooooosh-!

Frigid energy began gathering inward.

Compressed without limit.

Compressed until it was barely visible: a single droplet of cold.

Willpower bottomed out in an instant.

"Charge."

At the Demon King's word, I stopped time and refilled willpower.

As it filled, the Demon King kept compressing the energy further.

Just watching made my skin crawl. That enormous, impossible force, packed into something the size of a water droplet.

I refilled willpower several times over.

Stopped just before the overload threshold.

The Demon King swept a hand downward.

The frigid droplet fell toward the antlion, and...

Crack.

From the point of contact.

The antlion began to freeze. At an incredible speed.

Not even ten seconds for that enormous body to freeze solid.

Rumble.

The frozen antlion cracked apart and collapsed, piece by piece.

'Wow...'

Instant death.

That was how the antlion boss ended.

I came back down and reclaimed the body.

Haaa...

Breathing out white mist, I stared at what remained of the boss.

One corner of the desert, completely caved in.

The boss was dead, but no clear message appeared.

I checked the compass.

[134,217,728]

Past a hundred million.

Then something changed.

[0/134,217,728km]

"...?"

Next to the compass number.

The unit "km" had appeared.

...What does that mean?

I kept staring at the compass, unable to work it out.

But nothing else changed.

Two minutes passed and the number didn't keep growing.

I looked up, brow furrowed.

"..."

The direction the compass pointed.

The oasis was still there.

So I still had to reach it to clear the floor?

Wondering if anything had changed, I started moving toward the oasis.

After walking a short distance.

[1/134,217,728km]

The compass number changed.

I stopped and stared at it.

"...Hold on."

Could this be saying that there were a hundred and thirty-four million kilometers left to the oasis...?

I moved toward it again.

[2/134,217,728km]

A little more movement, and the numerator ticked up to 2.

So my guess was right.

'You have got to be kidding me...'

Travel over a hundred million kilometers?

I ran the math, stunned.

Okay. I had the warp device, at least...

If I kept warping every ten minutes?

Sixty thousand kilometers per hour.

Plus however much ground I covered on foot, so a little more than that.

Say roughly one and a half million kilometers per day...

That put arrival at the oasis at roughly ninety days.

"..."

Ninety days?

Ninety days?

...The Nightmare time limit had twenty days left.

[Nightmare]

Participants: 476,805

Time Remaining: 19 days 22 hours 52 minutes 1 second

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 8

Cold sweat ran down my back.

Only one thought kept circling through my head.

I'm screwed.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried