WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

Chapter 45

──────

Nightmare Floor 4 (1)

Tower Defense.

A type of defense game where you place towers to stop enemies coming down a limited route.

A familiar genre, something everyone has probably played at least once on mobile.

Floor 4's theme was similar to that.

Not the part about placing towers, but the part where I had to stop enemies moving down a fixed path.

[You have entered Nightmare difficulty Floor 4.]

The moment I entered, I stopped time.

I took in every visual detail in sight.

A wide space that made words like workshop, factory, and mechanics pop into my head all at once.

There were winding lanes.

Blending into the background, they even looked like conveyor belts moving products through a factory.

A large, square entrance like a shipping gate.

The lane started there, ran straight, and turned four times total.

In other words, it looked like two blocky L-shapes stacked vertically.

I was standing on top of the walls between those lanes.

There was about a 5-meter height difference between the lane and the wall tops.

The location and structure itself seemed no different from the other difficulties.

"Phew."

So in the end, I picked a penalty and came in.

I had no regrets. If anything, my mind felt calmer.

...Did it? Maybe I'd regret it if I died here after botching the clear.

I shook off the useless thoughts.

[1. Physical abilities reduced by 50%]

That was the penalty I chose.

The reason was simple.

I chose to preserve my skill firepower over my physical combat power.

Option 3 was too much of a gamble, and option 5, item prohibition, made it too hard to give up Pli.

Purely in physical terms, Pli was stronger than me.

And as long as his HP didn't fully drop, his summoned state could be maintained indefinitely.

So I judged it was better to lose half my physical ability and keep Pli.

Well... in the end, with no way to know what would happen on Floor 4, this was a choice based more on instinct.

Whether it was the right answer, I would find out soon enough.

I chose it while considering the theme as much as possible, but this was still a batshit do-whatever-it-wants difficulty where I never knew what kind of curveball might come flying in.

Still, maybe I should think positively.

What if Floor 4 was easier than I expected?

Maybe the Tower forced a penalty on me because it figured I could clear it anyway. Ha ha ha.

...I seriously wished that was true.

I released time.

As soon as I did, I felt strength rapidly drain from my body, exactly as expected after choosing the physical ability reduction penalty.

Then a mechanical voice full of static rang out.

- Due to malfunctions, the golems inside the workshop are running out of control, so all staff are advised to dispose of them immediately upon discoveryyy...

I looked toward the entrance to the lane.

The indicator light above it was blue.

When it changed to red, golems would come out from the entrance.

On Hard difficulty, there were said to be three stages total, with 3, 6, and 9 golems.

Golems had fairly high defense, no special weak points, and they were not attack units.

They only moved. They did not attack.

Come out of the entrance, advance along the lane, exit through the other side, that was all.

But like any defense game, I obviously couldn't let them reach the exit.

If that happened, the guide voice I just heard would announce a workshop-wide "great incineration" and start counting down from 10 seconds.

Incineration probably meant burning everything with fire, but no one had ever confirmed it firsthand. If they had seen it, they were dead.

Anyway, if even one golem reached the exit, the clear failed.

So my job was to destroy every golem that came out and stop their escape.

In Tower Defense terms, I was the tower. Just one that could move freely.

For more detailed data based on Hard difficulty:

The spacing between spawned golems was about 5 meters, and the time from entrance to exit was 150 seconds. Each straight section took 30 seconds.

And there was a 1-minute break between stages.

Just reference data.

If this was Nightmare, there could be more golems, faster movement, attacking golems, weird variant golems, or some bizarre gimmick or trick that changed the clear condition entirely. Or maybe everything I just listed was all there was.

I moved to the start of the lane where golems would spawn, hopping along the wall top.

For reference, every structure in this place except the golems was an indestructible object. Meaning I couldn't alter the lane terrain.

I summoned Pli right away.

"Your role is huge, Pli. Got it?"

Pli leaped down onto the lane.

I stayed on the wall.

Pli would attack golems directly on the lane, and I would attack from up here with magic skills.

My body was already weakened, so if I fought beside him on the lane, I'd just get in his way while he rampaged.

Honestly, this role split was one reason I chose penalty 1.

Ding-

Right on cue, the indicator turned red with a sound. The entrance door opened.

Come on then.

I watched the entrance, tense.

Thud, thud, thud...

Heavy footsteps.

The first golem appeared from the entrance.

Bipedal form, body size slightly bigger than Pli.

Its body looked like white stone, and in the center was something like a blue core embedded inside.

Kaaaah-!

The moment it emerged, Pli lunged in.

One foreleg smash to the head, and the golem collapsed into pieces.

One down... huh?

I had gotten ready to cast a skill, then tilted my head.

Golems kept coming out one by one, but every single one shattered easily from one hit by Pli.

Spawn, break. Spawn, break.

I didn't even need to cast anything, so I just watched.

'...Is it just easy because this is still Stage 1?'

Of course, Pli was strong too. Level 50 physical stats.

Ding-

A total of five golems came out.

The indicator turned blue, and the entrance closed again.

Only shattered golem fragments and cores were left on the lane, all broken by Pli.

Based on what I knew, Stage 2 would start in one minute.

During that time, I moved around and observed the area.

Suspicion was already starting to creep in.

The most horrific thing about Nightmare was how it set traps you had no way of figuring out on your first try.

The crossbow goblin on Floor 1, the illusion footholds on Floor 2, the underground area on Floor 3...

Actually, it's more accurate to say that by the time you figured it out, it was already too late.

There had to be something on Floor 4 too.

But nothing stood out yet.

Did more progress need to happen first?

Or was I missing something already? Ugh, Floor 3 PTSD.

Ding-

The indicator turned red.

As the stage started, the golem remains left on the lane turned to dust and disappeared.

I returned to the start of the lane and watched the entrance.

The same kind of golem as Stage 1 came out.

One hit per target, Pli went wild and crumbled them like Styrofoam.

Just as expected, Stage 2 had a total of ten.

None of them even got a few steps out of the entrance before getting spawn-killed.

Again, I didn't need to use a single skill.

Hard was 3, 6, and 9, so... maybe Nightmare had a bit more than fifteen?

But if golems were this weak, it didn't matter how many came out.

If this were like the other difficulties, then after three stages I'd already be two-thirds through the clear.

No way. No chance.

Believing the earth was flat would be more reasonable.

I couldn't relax at all.

To keep my Exaltation effect maintained, I kept moving left and right, and then,

Ding-

Red indicator light. Stage 3 started.

The pile of golem debris on the lane disappeared.

The entrance opened, and white golems came out again.

Twenty total, and Pli smashed all of them without trouble.

Maybe I'd gotten too strong and this was easier than expected?

I held that fleeting hope and watched for a clear completion message, just in case, but nope, nothing.

Instead of a message, the guide voice rang out again.

- Not only normal golems, but even the special golems our workshop painstakingly created have gone out of control and are malfunctioninggg... Dispose of all, dispose of all-

- Blue golems almost perfectly ignore 99% of physical damageee... Please respond with cautionnn...

What?

The indicator turned red, and the entrance opened.

A blue golem, different from before.

Other than color, it looked the same, same form, same core embedded in the center.

Pli charged in immediately and slammed its head with his foreleg.

Bang!

The golem only fell over. It didn't break.

It got up again and tried to advance, and Pli grabbed it and tore at it, but still did no damage.

Yeah, now we're getting some variation.

"Pli, back off."

Pli, who had been gnawing at the golem like a dog chew toy, sprang back.

I fired Flame Strike at the fallen golem and another one coming out behind it.

Kwoooom!

Five fireballs exploded in a huge blast.

Both golems shattered to pieces.

Blue golems ignored 99% of physical damage.

Pli's attacks didn't work on them.

On the flip side, my magic skills worked just fine.

Three more golems came out of the entrance.

No need to waste firepower, so I had Pli block the lane.

The golems didn't attack, so once Pli latched onto one, the golems behind it got stuck and couldn't move properly.

I waited for the 30-second cooldown, had Pli pull back, then fired Flame Strike at the clustered golems again.

Kwoooom!

Clean clear.

The indicator turned blue, and the entrance closed.

At this rate... I could clear even twenty of them without trouble.

If I packed the golems into one straight section, I could even sweep them all at once with Destruction Beam.

I still didn't need that yet. Destruction Beam had a 3-minute cooldown, so I had to save it.

The golem debris on the lane vanished, and Stage 5 started.

Again, ten blue golems came out.

I used the same method, had Pli body-block in moderation, then nuked them once they clustered.

Stage 6's twenty also got cleared the same way, no problem.

Before Stage 7 started, the guide voice rang out again.

- Red golems almost perfectly ignore 99% of magic damageee... Please respond with cautionnn...

Now it's magic damage immunity?

The golem debris on the lane disappeared, and the entrance opened.

A red golem came out.

Again, aside from the color, same form, same core in the center of the body.

Now it was Pli's turn to rampage again.

Pli attacked the crawling red golem.

Besides the magic damage immunity trait, the red golems also seemed stronger in base stats than the white ones.

They endured Pli's attacks better and pushed forward harder.

Still, they broke in the end.

Pli handled all five before they passed the first section.

Stage 8 started.

Ten was tougher.

Still, before they passed the middle of the second section, Pli finished them all.

For the final Stage 9, I stepped in too.

I dropped down to the lane and tried hitting the red golems...

But my attacks, with my physical ability cut in half, barely did anything to them.

Kwoooom!

Instead, I used skills to help stop their advance.

Even if I couldn't deal damage, that didn't mean they were immune to knockback, so skills like Blade Whirlwind still sent them flying.

While I did that, Pli took them out one by one.

All twenty in Stage 9 were blocked before passing the second section, and I got through without major trouble.

"..."

Something felt off.

Not from Sixth Sense, just my own gut feeling.

'This isn't Nightmare style.'

The golems were getting stronger and the difficulty was rising, sure.

But this wasn't a gimmick or trick... this was just pure stat checking.

Floors 1, 2, and 3 were vicious, but if you knew the solution, they still weren't physically impossible for other Nightmare challengers.

Was this level really something a Level 30 Climber could handle...?

Blue golems with physical damage immunity were practically a disaster for other Climbers who couldn't properly use magic-type skills.

And the golems' steadily rising stats were now getting to the point where even Pli was starting to feel the strain.

I looked around.

Could there be a hidden space or device like Floor 3? I'd been searching every break from earlier, but I still found nothing.

The only passages here were the entrance where golems came out and the exit.

It said if anything, not just golems, went through the exit, the great incineration countdown would start, so I couldn't leave through there.

I had also tried approaching the entrance while it was open during stage progress earlier, but Sixth Sense rang alarm bells, so that didn't seem right either.

I couldn't figure it out... Nightmare was always like this.

'But how many stages does this even have?'

Just as that sense of wrongness kept getting stronger, the guide voice rang out again.

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