WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 166: Nightmare, Floors 13 and 14 (2)
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[Floor 13 has been cleared on every difficulty.]
[The Tower is summoning new participants.]
I was moved to the Reward Room.
Floor 13 had taken quite a while, but the clear itself had been simple.
It was fortunate that my gamble had paid off.
I'd wondered what I would've done if it hadn't worked, but it had, so whatever.
I checked my reward.
[Epic+ skill enhancement stone]
When used, it can enhance one Epic+-grade skill.
An Epic+ skill enhancement stone had dropped.
It looked like rewards became Epic+ grade starting from Floor 13. The reward grade had evolved.
[‘Epic+ skill enhancement stone’ has been used on ‘Skill: Elemental Arrow Barrage (Rare+).’]
Without hesitation, I enhanced Elemental Arrow Barrage.
[Difficulty: Nightmare]
[Floor: 14]
[Level: 157]
[Willpower: 13,120/13,120]
[Skills: Radiant Incarnation (Legendary+), Elemental Arrow Barrage (Epic+)(+3), Destruction Beam (Epic+), Weak Point Insight (Epic)(+4), Hellfire Eruption (Epic)(+1), Subspace (Epic), Air Step (Epic), Finger-Flick Art (Epic), Life Devourer (Epic), Fatal Strike (Epic), Phantom Shift (Epic)...]
[Nightmare]
Participants: 1,173,617
Time Limit: 5 years 342 days 23 hours 47 minutes 15 seconds
Highest Floor Reached: Floor 14
After checking my status window, I exited the Tower.
When I returned to the living room at home, my family was there.
“...Seo-hyeon!”
My parents and younger sibling greeted me with relief.
They must have been worried sick.
It had taken more than a week to find out whether I could kill that bastard with the Lifespan Scale.
After resting for a bit, I immediately entered Floor 13 again.
[You have entered Nightmare difficulty Floor 13.]
The mirror space.
After waiting quietly for a moment, that thing soon appeared.
- Swap... Swap with me...!
I walked closer to the mirror.
My life probably wasn't in danger.
Let's see what happens when I touch the mirror.
When I reached out, it excitedly did the same.
The moment our hands touched the surface of the mirror...
“...!”
My vision wavered for an instant.
That was all. Nothing had changed.
...No, something had changed.
I looked beyond the mirror.
It was dancing around with excitement.
“I got out! I finally got out...!”
That was the real world where I'd been just moments ago.
And I was now inside the mirror.
‘So I really was the one getting trapped in the mirror.’
Was the gimmick that I would be trapped here forever and fail the clear?
Maybe rapid aging would apply to me too, and I'd grow old and die before it did.
It looked at me inside the mirror and taunted me.
“Hehehe, I'll never swap with you again! Stay trapped there forever! Idiot...!”
Yeah, sure.
[Would you like to exit the Tower?]
I exited Floor 13.
I could defeat that thing with the Demon King's power, but other Climbers would have no choice but to grit their teeth and endure if they wanted to clear this...
Mental strain aside, Floor 13 wasn't an environment where they could provide themselves with food and water.
Unless they had an immortality ability like mine, they would simply die.
Unless they entered from the start with enough supplies to last an absurdly long time.
How the hell were they supposed to know they needed to prepare for that...
Then again, there was no need to wonder.
It wasn't as if this had happened only once or twice. “If you don't know, you die” was standard Nightmare fare.
[Person123: Information on clearing Nightmare Floor 13.]
I didn't have time to personally test the route I suspected was the proper way to clear it.
I quickly organized and posted the information I had figured out.
Then, sooner than usual, I prepared to enter Floor 14.
I'd wasted quite a lot of time clearing Floor 13.
[Would you like to enter Nightmare difficulty Floor 14?]
After saying goodbye to my family, I entered Floor 14.
* * *
The theme of Floor 14 was escaping from a planet.
On other difficulties, the clear condition was to find a spaceship on an alien planet and escape.
They said Floor 14 was difficult because you had to fight monsters through a variety of extreme environments to reach the spaceship.
[You have entered Nightmare difficulty Floor 14.]
The instant I entered, I stopped time.
What I hadn't expected was that I was floating in midair from the start.
...In the middle of space, no less.
‘What?’
I released time.
When I turned around, a nearby planet came into view.
A reddish-yellow planet with horizontal stripes.
Countless chunks of rock floated around it...
I was extremely high above the planet.
High enough to take in the entire planet at a glance, closer to outer space than the planet's atmosphere.
I had to stop time again almost immediately.
There was one problem.
I couldn't breathe.
Well, of course I couldn't breathe. I was in space...
But they were taking away my ability to breathe right from the start?
Other difficulties obviously didn't have a trial like this.
You didn't start floating in space to begin with.
‘Do I need to go down to the planet's surface?’
Maybe I could breathe once I entered the planet's atmosphere?
Surely they weren't expecting me to hold my breath for the entire clear. It was a reasonable guess.
Were the rocks around me there so I could use them as footholds to descend?
I didn't need them. I could just use Air Step.
Or I could fly with the Demon King's power, or use the warp device... Ah, the warp device wouldn't work.
I needed to get down before I reached my limit for holding my breath. Ten minutes was too long.
Then an idea suddenly came to me.
Could this work?
After sharing my thoughts with the Demon King, I released time.
I pulled out the Sea Dragon's Ruyi Pearl from Subspace, then handed control of my body to the Demon King.
Crack-
The Demon King covered the area around my mouth with ice, like a mask.
Then he melted out space inside it and filled it with water.
That completely sealed my nose and mouth with water.
‘...This works?’
Surprisingly, I could breathe.
The Sea Dragon's Ruyi Pearl's effect, which allowed underwater breathing, had applied.
There couldn't be much oxygen dissolved in this tiny amount of water, so I wondered if that made any physical sense...
But applying the laws of physics to the Tower's power was nonsense. If it worked, that was enough.
I could use this trick in other environments where breathing was impossible.
With my breathing secured, I began moving at a leisurely pace.
I forcefully stepped through the air with Air Step and descended toward the planet's surface. No, I flew.
As I drew closer to the planet...
Gravity suddenly began affecting me beyond a certain point.
It was stronger than Earth's gravity. It felt several times stronger.
Even though the planet looked much smaller than Earth.
I let gravity take me and plummeted at tremendous speed.
The rocks floating around me did the same.
Boom!
I landed safely.
Feeling the unfamiliar pressure weighing down my entire body, I walked out of the crater.
The gravity was so strong that the rocky ground sank beneath each step I took.
An ordinary person probably would have been crushed to death.
Of course, it was easy enough for me.
The bigger issue was the chaos above my head.
I threw myself to the side.
A rock crashed down where I had just been standing like a meteor.
Rocks of all sizes were pouring from the sky at a rather terrifying speed.
Gravity at least several times stronger than Earth's, plus a rain of rocks.
Well, this much was manageable.
I shattered the ice mask.
“Suuup, hah.”
As expected, I could breathe normally once I was on the planet.
I stopped time.
Now it was time to consider the clear condition.
‘Do I need to find a spaceship?’
The clear condition on other difficulties was to find a spaceship and escape.
I didn't know how Nightmare would differ, but I needed to act with the existence of a spaceship in mind for now.
Apparently, other difficulties gave you something like a beacon from the beginning that guided you to the spaceship...
Was Nightmare telling me to find it on my own without anything like that?
Was I supposed to search the entire planet?
‘...There were craters.’
The view of the planet I'd seen from above flashed through my mind.
There had definitely been one massive crater at each pole.
Should I check one of them first?
It was best to inspect the most noticeable places first.
To get my bearings, I avoided the falling rocks and rose into the sky again.
Finding my direction wasn't difficult.
The planet's horizontal stripes were clear, so all I had to do was head straight perpendicular to them.
Actually, I didn't even need to do that.
I pulled out the warp device.
The distance to the pole where the crater was located was considerable.
Warping was obviously faster than moving there myself.
‘It's hard to estimate the distance, though...’
Earth's circumference was about 40,000 kilometers.
This planet was clearly smaller than Earth.
I was right around the equator now, so...
Should I estimate it at about 3,000 kilometers?
I decided to set it a little short of my estimate and travel the remaining distance myself.
I always charged it whenever I had the chance, so the warp device's Willpower was full.
I activated it immediately.
I waited out the timer, weaving around the falling rocks.
[0:01]
When the time came, I warped toward the pole.
After rising to check, I found that I was almost at the crater. But then...
‘What's that?’
At the center of the crater.
Looking closely, I could see something black.
I used Air Step to move toward it.
As I got closer, I saw that the black thing was a monster.
Giant insect monsters that looked like ants were swarming across a vast area. There had to be at least tens of thousands of them.
But what caught my attention even more was...
‘...There it is!’
An object standing tall like a rocket in the middle of the monster swarm.
It was definitely a spaceship. There really was one?
I quickly approached the spaceship.
Once I got close enough, the monsters reacted.
Screeeee-
They raised their heads toward the sky as if they were hostile to me.
What were they going to do just by looking at me?
The moment I had that thought, the ant monsters spread their wings in unison.
“Ah.”
They could fly?
The ant army rose into the air.
It looked like a black tidal wave rolling in. Disgusting.
I cast Elemental Arrow Barrage.
The forty fire arrows it could now fire after reaching +3 poured down on the ants.
Kwakakakakaboom!
Ants burst apart in midair like rain.
I kept up the indiscriminate bombardment, launching magic skills after them.
But there were too many to count, so I eventually had to break through with my body.
With Skin Hardening active, I charged through the incoming ants.
I cut down the ones clinging to me with the Sword of Heaven's Gatekeeper and pressed onward.
They were weak mobs that Sixth Sense didn't even react to.
Were they around level 70 or 80 at most?
All they could do was ram me with their bodies or bite with their jaws. No matter how many there were, they couldn't hurt me at all.
The occasional red one was a bit stronger, but it was still nothing special.
Covered in the ants' blood and bodily fluids, I easily reached the spaceship.
Now all I had to do was board this and escape, and I'd clear the floor!
...Not likely, right?
‘It's too easy.’
For Nightmare, it had been far too easy so far.
Certain there had to be more to it, I placed my hand on the spaceship.
Information appeared.
[Special Item: Near-Light-Speed Spaceship in Need of Repair]
This is a spaceship that travels through space at near-light speed. Once you board and operate it, it will automatically travel toward its destination. Its key components have been removed, rendering it nonfunctional. Retrieve all the parts and repair it!
Recovered parts: 0/3
Footnotes:
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