WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 133: Nightmare Floor 10 (6)

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No matter how far I traveled across the endless desert.

The oasis never got any closer. Not at all.

[Nightmare]

Participants: 573,620

Time Limit: 18 days 4 hours 11 minutes 5 seconds

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 8

Had my family read my will?

No, this wasn't the time to think about that.

At this rate, there was no way I could clear it before the deadline.

I desperately searched for other methods.

...But it all turned out to be meaningless struggling.

[Nightmare]

Participants: 573,620

Time Limit: 9 days 20 hours 37 minutes 29 seconds

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 8

Where had I gone wrong?

What should I have done?

I only needed to shave off a few minutes.

If I'd noticed the underground cave sooner, solved the puzzle faster, broken through the maze just a little quicker... ah.

Regretting it was useless.

[Nightmare]

Participants: 573,619

Time Limit: 1 day 16 hours 54 minutes 39 seconds

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 8

The world was about to end.

Yet I still hadn't found an answer.

No, I knew.

There was no other answer.

All I had to do was cover the required distance.

That was the only way to clear it, and I'd simply gotten the very first step wrong.

If I hadn't accepted the Tower's proposal.

If I could have used the Scale of Life...

Could I have found some way to clear it before the deadline?

Considering the Tower had banned not just any item, but the Scale of Life, maybe I could have.

[Nightmare]

Participants: 573,617

Time Limit: 1 hour 1 second

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 8

When only one hour remained before the deadline.

I stopped time.

That was the best resistance I could manage.

Within stopped time, I repeated the same cycle of anguish and despair.

I kept at it, hoping some miraculous solution would come to mind.

...I didn't know how much time had passed.

A year? Several years?

Maybe more than ten.

So much time had passed that I could no longer think properly, that even my sense of self had begun to blur.

I still hadn't found a solution.

In the end.

I gave up.

...I'd done enough, hadn't I?

Yeah, the Ark.

At least I'd deployed the Ark outside.

It was a destruction that would come eventually anyway.

It had been impossible from the beginning. Clearing that demonic Tower forever.

So it wasn't my fault.

I'd done my best.

Thanks to me, at least a small number of people would be able to live.

After unfreezing time, I let go of everything and blankly watched the deadline tick away.

...No matter how much I tried to rationalize it, I knew.

Countless people would die because I hadn't succeeded.

[Nightmare]

Participants: 573,617

Time Limit: 1 second

Highest Floor Reached: Floor 8

The moment the deadline ran out, I closed my eyes.

[The Nightmare difficulty deadline has been exceeded.]

[The Tower's Curse activates.]

[99% of humanity will die.]

.

.

.

Several dozen more days passed.

I finally reached the oasis.

[You have successfully cleared Nightmare difficulty Floor 8.]

Ignoring the message, which no longer meant anything, I left the Tower.

The moment I stepped out into the hotel corridor where I'd last entered, I encountered Fallen.

Just as the Tower had warned.

The world was over.

Ninety-nine percent of humanity had died, and all the dead had turned into Fallen.

I killed the Fallen filling the streets and headed toward my home.

Right then, I just wanted to see my family's faces.

I wanted to make sure they were all safe.

They would be. Of course they would. Our home was within the Ark's range too.

When I reached Gangseo-gu in Seoul, where the Ark was located...

The place was complete chaos.

Outside the Ark's curtain, corpses and Fallen were packed together like ants.

The inside wasn't normal either.

People crowded the city, while human corpses lay scattered carelessly across the streets.

No one paid attention to the corpses. They were all flocking somewhere.

At the end of the road they were headed down, Climbers were distributing food.

"Hold on, everyone! Wait your turn! Stop fighting...!"

I saw the corpses of Zone 1 monsters.

Were they handing out the meat from monsters hunted on Floor 5?

The starving people looked like a swarm of ravenous fish.

Was this because I'd opened the Ark completely?

The chaos unfolding before my eyes went far beyond anything I'd imagined.

With growing unease, I headed home.

What had happened to my family...?

They had to be safe. They had to be.

I reached the front door of our apartment.

For a moment, I felt relieved by the presence inside.

Then I realized the voices weren't my family's.

I tore open the front door and went inside.

There were strangers there. They looked startled when they saw me.

"...Who are you?"

I asked where the people who lived here had gone, but no answer came.

Only after beating them all did I get an answer.

A trail of blood ran all the way to the master bedroom.

With trembling hands, I opened its door.

"..."

I saw the three corpses inside.

After that, I lost my mind.

I killed every intruder.

Then I couldn't do anything for a long time.

...What was this?

Was this really reality?

Why had this happened?

Was opening the Ark completely the mistake?

If I'd known this would happen, I wouldn't have done it.

I wouldn't have cared if everyone else died.

What the hell... had I done all this for...?

The stench of blood in the house was suffocating.

Numb, I fled outside again as if running away.

People were still fighting and stealing food from each other in the streets. They looked like cockroaches crawling everywhere.

"...Ugh."

Suddenly overwhelmed by nausea, I bent over.

A few men walking past cautiously approached and started searching through my pockets.

On impulse, I swung my hand.

The head of the man rummaging through my pants pocket burst apart.

"Huh...?"

I blew apart the heads of the two men backing away with pale faces too.

The rage that had felt ready to explode inside me eased a little.

I looked down at my blood-soaked hand and exhaled from the depths of my lungs.

Nothing mattered anymore.

Boom!

I leaped high into the air and dropped into the center of the largest crowd.

For an instant, the chaos stopped, and everyone's eyes turned toward me.

"...Get out of the Ark. All of you."

I spoke to them all.

"Or I'll kill every last one of you."

And how many had I killed after that?

I killed the people who refused to leave the Ark, and the Climbers who tried to stop me.

Part of me wanted to kill everyone I saw.

Maybe the last shred of conscience I had left was that I stopped at driving them out of the Ark.

Those disgusting insects who struggled so pathetically to save only themselves, without paying any price or sacrificing anything...

I drove every one of them outside the Ark.

"Let everything be according to God's will. Please grant this humble servant a chance to follow You."

Ridiculously enough, there were Climbers among them who stepped forward, saying they would follow me.

Ye Tianwei, China's representative Nightmare clearer, was one of them.

He told me about the future.

That I should become the true ruler and rule over people, how I could manage and exploit them efficiently...

I didn't care.

Maybe watching people suffer would ease this maddening feeling.

It didn't make me feel any better.

Whenever unbearable anger rose inside me, I went outside and vented it by beating Fallen to death.

What was I doing? What had I become?

[You can no longer clear new floors on Nightmare difficulty.]

That fucking Tower even took away my chance to throw everything away.

After the Nightmare deadline passed, I couldn't climb anymore.

In a world already broken beyond repair, I too had become broken beyond repair.

With no purpose left, no meaning left...

I slowly died like that.

Thinking the death that would soon come was the only rest left for me.

* * *

"...That's the end."

After hearing all of Person123's story, I didn't know what to say.

I never expected something like that had happened.

Now I could understand this world's version of me a little better.

At the same time, I wondered if I would fall this far too after losing my entire family.

Of course, if I were in the same situation, I probably would have lost my mind too.

I just... could only sigh.

"What a fucked-up world."

I muttered that, then asked,

"What did you do with your family?"

"I buried them in the mountains."

"Right. Then..."

I stood up.

"Let's go together. I want to say hello to my family too."

Person123 silently looked at me.

After we stared each other down for a moment, Person123 stood up too.

"Follow me."

Person123 shot up into the sky.

...Had he opened up to me a little?

I followed him up.

We raced through the sky and quickly returned to the Ark.

A small hill behind an apartment complex in Gangseo-gu.

That was where his family's graves were.

I looked at the three graves before me.

Mother, father, younger sibling. Each of their names was carved into a gravestone.

...This felt strange.

First, I bowed to them.

Person123 quietly watched me from beside me.

After I finished bowing and stood up, we both stayed silent. Then I spoke first.

"This probably won't comfort you, but... the family in my world is healthy and doing well."

I saw Person123's eyes shake for an instant.

He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them and suddenly took out a cigarette.

What was with this guy? He smoked too.

I'd never smoked even once.

"Let's say everything you told me is true."

"It is true, not 'let's say.'"

"How did you clear Floor 8 before the deadline?"

I scratched my head and answered.

"I used the Scale of Life."

"..."

"You accepted the Tower's proposal, so using the Scale of Life must have been banned for you. Right?"

Person123 nodded.

An unmistakably deep regret showed on his face.

I asked something I had been wondering about too.

"By the way, don't you have the Demon King?"

"...The Demon King? What are you talking about?"

"Have you never met the Sage either?"

Person123 frowned as though I were talking nonsense.

I'd guessed it when he refused to use the Demon King's power until the very end.

So this world's me hadn't met either the Demon King or the Sage?

Maybe it was because the two of them were bug-like existences.

Wait, then this guy cleared Floor 7 without the Demon King's power?

That was more impressive than me.

Person123 blew out cigarette smoke and said,

"You said earlier this world was Floor 10. And the worlds inside the Tower are worlds swallowed by the Tower."

"Yeah."

"What exactly does that mean? Has this world already been swallowed by the Tower without me even realizing it?"

"That... I don't know for certain either."

After thinking for a moment, I said,

"Maybe this world has already been destroyed in the future, and what the Tower is showing us is a point in its past. Even though the Tower's Curse activated, the world hasn't completely been destroyed yet."

The Demon King had told me before that the Tower's floors were like shells of worlds it had already swallowed.

That meant this world was destined to be completely destroyed in the future, Ark or no Ark.

Whether it would destroy itself, or the Tower would do something again, I didn't know.

"Then this world and I are like a simulation too. What a joke."

Person123 let out a hollow chuckle.

"I still can't believe it. How am I supposed to believe something like that?"

"...Yeah, I get it."

It wasn't much different from telling him he was really an NPC in a game.

Person123 blankly stared at the graves with an unreadable expression, then spoke again.

"So what do you have to do to clear Floor 10?"

"Huh?"

['Kill' Me'.]

I thought about it.

Could I be honest with him now?

I didn't need long to decide.

"...Actually, killing you is the clear condition. The message in front of me says that. It says, 'Kill Me.'"

"Kill me?"

"Yeah. Since you're me, I guess it means I have to kill you. I can't be sure, though."

Even now, I had doubts.

Because... getting this far hadn't been all that difficult.

Finding where he was, winning a fight against him.

Would simply killing this guy really clear Floor 10?

Wasn't there another trap?

Person123 nodded and said,

"Then kill me."

"...What?"

"I still find what you're saying hard to believe, but I want to believe it's true."

Person123 looked at me.

"I'm a failure. It doesn't matter whether I live or die. I was only alive because I couldn't die. Clear the floor and get out. At least protect your family in your world."

"..."

"My lifespan isn't long anyway."

Huh?

What was that supposed to mean?

"Wait, did you use the Scale of Life too?"

Person123 put out his cigarette and took something out of Subspace.

It was an orange skill stone.

[Skill: Resurrection (Legendary+)]

Revives a dead target. Cannot be used on a target that has been dead for more than 24 hours. Requires 3 hours of concentration to cast.

Category: Magic-Type

Willpower Cost: 10,000

Cooldown: 72 hours

I accepted the skill stone and checked its information.

Resurrection? What was this...

"I used the Scale of Life too, after I cleared Floor 8 and came out."

"...Don't tell me."

"I tried to bring my family back. It had already been far more than 24 hours, so I couldn't revive them. I gave up all my lifespan and still got scammed by this fucking item."

Person123 said,

"You learn it. I don't know if you'll be able to learn it, but try. I'm not giving it to you so you can kill me and bring me back, so don't ever revive me."

I silently looked at the Resurrection skill stone.

Then I let out a hollow laugh.

Because a thought struck me like lightning.

...This fucking Tower. Seriously.

"Hey."

"...?"

"I thought this was too easy. Seeing this, I think I get it."

['Kill' Me'.]

There was no hidden trap in that message.

No, the trap was that it meant exactly what it said, without any hidden meaning.

It seemed I had to kill "me."

Not the other me standing before me, but truly myself.

Death meant failure to clear the floor, yet I had to kill myself to clear it?

That was why this Resurrection skill was necessary, I thought.

After I killed myself, Person123 would use this skill to revive me.

If I'd killed Person123 without thinking, clearing Floor 10 would have become impossible forever.

Wasn't that exactly the dirty, filthy way Nightmare worked?

That was why I felt almost certain this was the real solution.

Until I saw the Resurrection skill stone, I too had naturally understood the message as telling me to kill my other self.

"You learn the skill. You need to learn it and revive me. That should be the answer."

It was impossible for me to learn it and revive myself. How could I use a skill when I was dead?

After hearing the explanation, Person123 nodded.

"That does sound like Nightmare. Fine."

Person123 took back the skill stone and acquired Resurrection.

The skill stone scattered and vanished.

"Are we doing this right away?"

"...We should do it now."

I took a deep breath.

Then I asked Person123,

"You'll revive me properly, right? You're not going to decide not to revive me, are you?"

Person123 jerked his chin as though telling me to hurry up already.

He wouldn't even play along with a joke.

"Ah, wait a second."

"What now?"

"That skill costs 10,000 Willpower, right? What's your level? Your maximum Willpower can't be 10,000."

Even if Willpower recovers infinitely, I can't use the skill if my maximum isn't high enough.

Person123 took out a bracelet and ring from Subspace.

"What's that?"

"Items that increase Willpower by 25% and 30%."

"...You've got some good stuff. I have one too, though."

"They're fucking useless to you and me."

Person123 smirked.

Come to think of it, as if we'd made a promise, neither of us had directly said the words "time stop" since earlier.

...Why was that? Did it feel like the Tower might be listening in?

How much did the Tower know?

Did it already know why I could recover Willpower infinitely and freely use magic skills without delay?

Did it know my true ability, the ability to stop time?

"I'm ready."

I pushed aside those stray thoughts.

And prepared to die.

"Hoo..."

I needed to blow off my head in one shot.

Because I had to destroy my head to die, due to the Hydra Blood effect.

After exchanging one final look with Person123.

"You've been through a lot too."

I gave him my final farewell and stopped time.

After finishing my concentration, I cast Destruction Beam.

Straight toward my own head-

.

.

.

"..."

I blinked my eyes open.

Person123 was looking down at me.

...Had my consciousness gone out for a moment?

I'd died and come back to life, right? Had it worked properly?

[You have successfully cleared Nightmare difficulty Floor 10.]

[You absorb the power of the floor.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

.

.

.

[Your level has increased.]

[You are the first to successfully clear Nightmare difficulty Floor 10.]

[You will be moved to the Reward Room.]

I'd succeeded.

I saw Person123's face beyond the messages.

"Hey! Thank you...!"

Before I could even give my final thanks to the guy wearing a strangely bitter smile.

My vision changed.

* * *

Kim Seo-hyeon looked at the spot where his other self had disappeared.

Then he turned his gaze back to the air.

[The Tower makes a proposal to 'Person123'.]

[If you do not use 'Skill: Resurrection (Legendary+),' all of Person123's dead family members will be resurrected.]

[If you wish to accept the proposal, do not use 'Skill: Resurrection (Legendary+).']

The message that appeared the moment the other Kim Seo-hyeon blew off his own head with Destruction Beam and killed himself.

"Ha."

Kim Seo-hyeon let out a hollow laugh.

Really... this bastard was unbelievable.

Even knowing it was obviously a trap, even knowing it was such an openly blatant trick.

He still had to stop time and agonize over it for a long while.

...In the end, he revived the dead Kim Seo-hyeon.

He didn't want to be toyed with until the very end.

[The Tower's proposal is nullified.]

Kim Seo-hyeon collapsed to the ground.

He took out another cigarette and lit it.

After blankly staring at his family's graves, he looked up at the sky.

The sky was crackling and distorting.

"...So it was true."

That guy had been right.

Within the false world slowly collapsing around him, Kim Seo-hyeon chuckled.

"You'd better do well, at least."

He hoped that guy would land at least one crushing blow on that fucking Tower.

With that final wish, he closed his eyes.

...Let's rest now.

May whatever waited after this be eternal rest.

Footnotes:

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