WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

Chapter 127

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Zone 5 (2)

"Whew, that thing was seriously strong."

The team members recovered the byproducts from the bone dragon they'd just taken down.

The Peacekeeping Corps' elite hunting team.

They were in the middle of a hunt in Zone 5.

Because visibility barely existed in the fog-choked field, Zone 5 was a dangerous zone to hunt even for high-level climbers strong enough to fight the monsters here.

But the returns made it worth doing.

The core dropped by Mist Spirits, one of the monster types found in Zone 5.

Once it came out that it worked as a stabilizing catalyst for mana generation using magic stones, companies researching monster byproducts started naming their own price for it.

A handful of climbers even hunted Zone 5 for the thrill of it, not just the money.

"I still can't see a thing out here. Come in here alone and you'd die without a trace, huh?"

A member hunting Zone 5 for the first time muttered, looking around.

Another member spoke in a relaxed tone, trying to play the seasoned veteran.

"You heard the story? They say Taylor hunts this place solo, wandering around by herself."
"...Huh? Seriously? Isn't that flat-out insane?"
"It's a famous story among the Climber Bureau staff over there. Apparently she's doing it to fill the Zone 5 gauge fast, for Person123's sake."
"Well, then I guess we're lending a hand right now too, huh? Ha ha."

The members traded jokes back and forth.

They'd just finished a fight, so the tension had eased off a little.

"Don't get careless. Stay alert."

Justin, the deputy captain of the Peacekeeping Corps, straightened his members out before they could let their guard down completely.

Since Person123 had released detailed information on Zone 5, a hunting manual of sorts existed by now.

Even so, Zone 5 was the kind of place that killed you the instant you let your guard slip.

A few months back, a level-42 member had his head torn off in an instant by a giant worm...

"...Above you!"

Justin caught the presence and shouted.

A massive giant worm shot down like an arrow from a nearby tree, straight for one member's head.

The targeted member reacted a beat too late.

At that exact moment.

Flash!

A beam of light flickered, and lightning burst the giant worm apart.

The giant worm's corpse dropped to the ground, all its strength gone.

The members froze and just blinked at the corpse.

"Wh... what was that...?"

Justin had no idea what had just happened either.

...A new anomaly in Zone 5? He'd never even heard of something like this.

He stared, dumbfounded, in the direction the flash of light had come from.

* * *

Once Radiant Incarnation's cooldown came back.

I immediately set my plan of wiping out Zone 5's monsters into motion.

Whoosh!

I cast Radiant Incarnation at the very innermost edge of Zone 5, right at the border between Zone 4 and Zone 5.

'Let's go.'

I started sweeping in a circle from the innermost part of Zone 5.

Found a bone dragon right away.

Cast Flame Barrage.

Without even checking whether the fireball connected, I shot off again.

Right after, I ran into a Mist Spirit.

One of the ones that could split off clones of itself.

The Mist Spirit didn't even get a chance to notice me before it took a lightning bolt and burst apart.

Bone dragons, giant worms, crowned-claw ghouls, Mist Spirits.

Those were the four monster types in Zone 5, and bone dragons showed up the most often.

Either way, I flew around at light speed, killing every monster I ran into.

Of course, with visibility this limited from the fog, my original plan of sweeping Zone 5 perfectly in circles from the inner edge out to the outer wasn't happening.

My sense of direction went straight out the window partway through.

But it didn't matter either way.

Even just wandering wherever, monsters kept popping into view like fish in a stocked pond. I was moving at light speed, after all.

I killed more than ten in the span of a single second.

That was only because of the little pause each kill required. Without that, I'd have gotten through even more.

That's how I started sweeping Zone 5 in earnest.

'Hm?'

I ran into other people along the way, too.

Looked like Peacekeeping Corps climbers.

They seemed to be getting ambushed by a giant worm, so I burst the thing with a lightning bolt as I passed.

Kill, kill, kill.

I had to hunt as much as possible during Radiant Incarnation's ten-minute duration.

Checking the gauge periodically, it was climbing at an absurd rate.

'Might actually work?'

At this rate... I might actually be able to fill it all the way.

That's when the Demon King spoke up.

- Just let me freeze the whole thing solid with my own power. Why bother running around like this?

'Can't do that.'

If I let the Demon King's power loose without limits, I could pull off some ridiculous area attack like on Floor 9.

But there might be people around, like there just had been.

With visibility this restricted, I couldn't risk an attack that massive.

Still, I switched with the Demon King partway through.

Stopping time just to cast magic skills started to feel like a waste of that precious time.

The Demon King flew around freezing Zone 5's monsters in my place.

My one worry was whether the respawn rate could keep up if I somehow actually managed to wipe out every monster in Zone 5.

Whether there were just more monsters spawned than I'd imagined, or the respawn was fast.

I couldn't tell which, but either way monsters kept turning up.

[Zone 5 (99.9%)]

The ten minutes ran out.

I had no idea how many I'd killed in total, but it had to be a truly absurd number.

Radiant Incarnation shut off, and I checked the gauge.

Frustratingly, it fell short by 0.1 percent.

Of course, that much I could handle by hunting from here on out.

I'd be able to summon and kill the Zone 5 boss before the day was out.

Before that, I left Floor 5 and opened the Communication Window.

[Person123: I'll be taking on the Zone 5 boss shortly. If you're currently in Zone 5, please head outside, since you could get caught up in the fight.]

There'd been people hunting there earlier too.

If they ran into the boss before I did for no reason, it could get dangerous.

The Zone 5 boss had to be at least level 100 or so.

[Ignition: What's up with the Zone 5 gauge? Wasn't it around 80 percent just a bit ago?]
[Flurry: Right? It jumped up at some insane speed. Bug or something?]
[Statute: What bug lol]
[Descent: Huh? Person123 posted that he's taking down the Zone 5 boss. Check the Nightmare window.]
[Starship: Wait, did Person123 do that to the Zone 5 gauge?]
[Resilon: Looking at the post, seems like it...?]
[GreenTea: What's going on this time, what did he even do lololololol]

I closed the Communication Window, which had gone haywire, and entered Floor 5 again.

I hunted around to fill the remaining 0.1 percent.

After a fair while had passed...

[The Zone 5 Boss has appeared.]

The message popped up.

I summoned Pli and started running through Zone 5.

The fog was the problem, as expected.

With visibility this blocked, finding the boss looked like it would take forever.

Still, I focused as hard as I could and tried using Sixth Sense.

Since it was a boss, Sixth Sense should react more strongly, letting me widen my search range.

'Please don't tell me I can't even find it today...'

I thought that while wandering Zone 5 for a long while.

...Should I just give up for today and pick it up tomorrow? Right as that thought started creeping in.

"...!"

I whipped around to one side.

A very faint reaction from Sixth Sense.

I sprinted toward it right away.

'The boss.'

A monster burst out of the fog.

I dismissed Pli and dropped down to the ground.

Something like a white jellyfish...? A monster standing on its tentacles, more or less.

No, wait. It floated a little above the ground, like a ghost.

Its size wasn't a joke either.

By feel, it seemed roughly the same size as the Zone 4 boss.

I felt nothing but relief at finding it, no real tension.

Sixth Sense told me this was well within my ability to handle.

And even if it turned out dangerous somehow, I could just use the Demon King's power.

Still... this thing barely has any presence, even standing right in front of me?

Whoosh!

The jellyfish boss writhed without making a sound, then brought one tentacle down toward me.

I hopped lightly to the side to dodge.

The tentacle scorched the ground I'd been standing on a second ago.

I stopped time in midair.

After finishing concentration, I fired a fully charged Destruction Beam.

Shhhhhh-

'Hm?'

The Destruction Beam pierced straight through the boss's body.

But the hit part scattered like mist, then instantly snapped back to its original shape.

I followed up with Flame Barrage.

Kwaaaaaang!

A fierce blaze surged up and burst the boss apart.

But it was the same thing again.

The boss's body scattered like mist and reformed.

What was this...

Wasn't that basically invincible?

The boss attacked again. A string of tentacle strikes.

I ran and dodged, jumping around.

Then the boss scattered like mist.

"...!"

Sixth Sense reacted at my back.

I spun my head around fast.

The boss had suddenly appeared right behind me.

Huh, teleportation too, then?

The boss opened something like a mouth inside its cluster of tentacles.

A powerful shockwave burst out, sweeping away the ground and trees in a straight line.

Of course, I got out of the way in time.

I put some distance between us, stopped time briefly, and thought it over.

Abilities confirmed: turning its body into mist, teleportation, and a shockwave attack.

Dodging the attacks wasn't hard...

The problem was that its mist-form ability was eating every single one of my attacks whole.

...Was it possible magic skills didn't work, and only physical attacks did?

To test that, I charged straight at the boss this time.

I dodged the tentacle strikes and closed in.

I jumped and slammed my bare fist into the boss's head.

No impact whatsoever, the struck part scattering like smoke again. I couldn't even touch it.

I used Air Step to dodge the tentacles thrashing through the air, then pulled back again.

'Does this thing have some kind of gimmick?'

There was no way it was actually invincible.

They wouldn't have built it if it couldn't be killed, right?

There'd been something with a similar ability back when I cleared a sub-tower. That vampire boss that turned its body into blood.

I'd beaten that one by just blasting its entire body apart with Destruction Beam... but that trick clearly wasn't working on this thing.

"Ah."

An idea came to me.

Every patch of ground the boss's tentacle had struck was completely destroyed.

Simple logic, really.

My physical force did nothing to it at all... so how was it exerting physical force of its own?

Whoosh!

Another tentacle swung in.

I didn't dodge this time.

Right before the tentacle hit me, I cast Thunder Strike.

Crackle-crack!

The tip of the boss's tentacle burst apart cleanly.

'Bingo.'

Confirmed.

This selfish bastard only dropped its mist-form ability the instant it attacked, huh?

If that was the case, I just had to time my counters for that same instant.

With one tentacle blown apart, the boss showed no sign of pain and swung another tentacle without hesitation.

Given that it had gone into mist form earlier too, right when I'd dodged in close and punched it...

The window where the mist form dropped had to be an absolute sliver of time.

I timed it and used Teleportation to dodge an attack, and in that same instant.

Instead of targeting the tentacle, I aimed Hellfire Eruption straight at the boss's head.

If its mist-form drop wasn't limited to just the attacking tentacle part...

Kwaaaaaaang!

A massive pillar of fire surged up.

The boss didn't scatter into mist this time. It took the hit head-on.

So the whole body's mist form dropped, just as I thought.

Wrapped in blazing hellfire, the boss crumpled and melted down.

This was Hellfire Eruption boosted to nearly double power, thanks to the Zone 3 boss bracelet and the fire magic passive.

Still, boss was boss. It didn't die right away. Its life force held on stubbornly.

I didn't bother closing in, just laid down Searing Zone and kept firing off spells.

Not long after, a message popped up.

[The Zone 5 Boss has been defeated.]

[You have received the Zone 5 Boss kill reward.]

[You have received the reward for being the first to defeat the Zone 5 Boss.]

The Zone 5 boss.

An easy clear.

I headed straight back to the Zone 0 portal and moved to the reward room.

Let's see what the reward turned out to be.

"Oh."

There were three rewards.

A boss item that looked like the first-clear reward.

A pure white orb, by the look of it.

And one Epic-grade skill stone, along with one Rare-grade skill enhancement stone.

Quite a haul this time, huh?

I checked the rewards one by one.

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