WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

Chapter 75

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Nightmare Floor 6 (1)

If Floor 4's theme was defense, then Floor 6 added offense.

Your units and the enemy units clash in a lane, and whoever pushes into the enemy base first and destroys it wins. It was probably a game genre everyone had tried at least once.

League of Hero.

It wasn't as popular as it used to be, but in Korea it was still a very famous game, practically a national one.

Floor 6 was easiest to understand if you pictured that format.

There were lanes, monsters spawned from each base and advanced along them.

Turrets stood at intervals, and if you pushed into the enemy base and shattered the core, you won.

Of course, unlike League of Hero, this wasn't a 5v5 team game. It was solo play, just me alone.

League of Hero also had two map types.

A three-lane map and a one-lane map.

For Floor 6, you were supposed to think of the one-lane map.

[You have entered Nightmare difficulty Floor 6.]

[Absorbing the power of Floor 5.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

.

.

.

A stream of messages popped up the moment I entered.

Just as I expected, entering Floor 6 gave me the Floor 5 level reward.

[Level: 70]

I stopped time immediately.

As always, I checked all the information in sight first.

The sky was packed with dark clouds, like thunder could break any second.

Spread out before me was a massive bridge.

That bridge was the lane.

And far, far beyond it, I could see...

the enemy base.

My eyesight was sharp enough to see it clearly, including the enemy core.

Was the bridge around 500 meters long?

Judging by the distance, Nightmare seemed about the same as the other difficulties in that regard.

I released time and looked around.

I was currently in our base.

A huge red gem floated slightly above the center of our base too.

That was our core.

Like in a game, there was even a health bar above it.

"...?"

That part was fine.

...But this was weird.

Why were there three bridges?

Looking around, it wasn't just the one in front of me.

Two more bridges were connected around the base, each pointing toward a corner of a triangle.

In other words, there were three lanes.

Ah, I get it.

Enemies came from all three directions?

"For fuck's sake."

I wasn't even surprised.

Unlike the other difficulties with only one lane, Nightmare apparently had three.

Yeah, yeah... this was Nightmare, all right.

So I had to cover all three lanes by myself.

And I had to destroy three enemy cores too.

'This won't be easy.'

Whatever it took, I'd have to pull it off again.

I got ready.

I had heard monsters spawned 30 seconds after entry, so it would begin soon.

I briefly checked my strengthened body now that I was level 70.

Then I picked up a mace from the weapons hanging on one side of the base.

[The match begins!]

[Destroy all of the enemy's cores!]

A moment later, messages appeared in front of me.

Pop.

At the same time, three blue portals formed near the core.

One goblin was summoned from each.

As soon as they spawned, the goblins each started moving toward their own lane.

Near the lane entrances, the floor had helpful numbers painted on it: 1, 2, and 3.

I headed to Lane 1 first.

Passing a pair of towering blue stone statues standing at the bridge entrance, I followed the goblin.

Whoooo-

Looking off the side of the bridge, there was a bottomless invisible abyss. Cold air rose from below.

It felt like a giant fidget spinner-shaped battlefield floating in midair.

I looked back at the goblin.

Kerrk, kerrk.

It kept walking, chattering away without paying me any attention.

I'd heard you couldn't give commands to allied units.

All they did was follow the lane and fight enemies. That was their entire programmed behavior.

There were first turrets and second turrets.

The pair of stone statues I'd just passed at the bridge entrance were the second turrets.

And the single stone statue near the middle of the bridge was the first turret.

The number and layout of turrets were the same on the enemy side.

So to summarize.

I had to destroy the enemy first turret, then second turret, then push into the base and destroy the core.

Since you could only destroy the core after all turrets were down, changing the order was impossible...

And because there were three lanes, I'd have to repeat that three times.

Of course, since this was Nightmare, I had no idea what other cute little gimmick might be hiding.

For reference, our side spawned one monster, while the enemy side spawned three.

Since the enemy side had no player like me, it was natural they'd get more monsters.

The difficulty differences were in the monsters.

Easy had goblins a bit stronger than Floor 1 goblins.

Normal had orcs.

Hard had orcs far stronger than Normal's.

Then why did I get goblins on Nightmare?

No need to wonder.

The enemy monsters weren't goblins.

"Ha."

I reached the middle of the bridge.

Looking at the enemy monsters, I laughed. A dry laugh.

Green-skinned giants much bigger than goblins.

They looked like they could crumple goblins one-handed.

Not orcs... maybe ogres?

From what I remembered, they looked a little different from the trolls I'd seen in the sub-tower before.

Anyway, that wasn't what mattered.

What mattered was that we had one goblin while they had three ogres. Completely insane imbalance.

There were already three lanes, and now the monsters were like this too.

It was absurdly unfair, but I decided to think positively.

At least they weren't spawning ten at a time. How generous.

Grrraaaah-!

The ogres charged toward me.

Our goblin charged at them too, like an ant rushing an elephant.

Before the goblin got instantly deleted, I moved first.

I leaped up and smashed the lead ogre's head in one blow.

Kwaaaaang!

Then I fired Flame Strike and blew up the other two.

Thankfully, the ogres weren't that strong.

Around level twenty-something, maybe?

The dead ogre corpses quickly vanished.

I looked at the enemy first turret.

It was the same shape as ours, a red stone statue with only the color different.

Once all enemies died, the goblin kept advancing toward the enemy turret.

Flash!

A laser fired from the turret and erased the goblin.

I stopped time.

'Let's see.'

Time to sort this out.

Even with goblins versus ogres, the unit power gap between our side and theirs wasn't the issue, because I was here...

The problem was the three lanes.

While I pushed one lane, the other two kept taking attacks.

Against three ogres, our goblin was basically nonexistent.

The solution came quickly.

I released time and ran back to base.

"Pli."

I summoned Pli and sent it to Lane 2.

Three level-twenty-something ogres were easy work for Pli alone.

That solved Lane 2.

I ran to Lane 3.

I found one ogre pounding on the first turret, bang, bang.

Then the turret laser fired and blew up the remaining ogre.

Was turret laser cooldown ten seconds?

The turret attack seemed to one-shot ogres too, but since ogres came three at a time, turrets on unattended lanes were bound to take some hits.

Monster spawn interval was 30 seconds.

Fwoooosh!

I deployed Searing Zone in the middle of Lane 3's bridge.

The ogres that stepped into it ignited.

After getting the Zone 3 boss bracelet plus a fire magic passive, Searing Zone had grown much stronger, so even as a sustained damage skill, it dropped ogres quickly.

[Skill: Searing Zone (Rare+)]

Creates a searing zone with a 5-meter radius within 10 meters. Targets entering the area continuously take burn damage. Casting requires 50 seconds of mental concentration.

Classification: Magic-Type

Willpower Cost: 30 per second

Cooldown: 1 minute

What was this skill's advantage?

The 10-meter distance was only the casting condition. Once cast, it stayed active no matter how far away I moved.

In other words, I could leave Searing Zone on Lane 3,

and stay on Lane 1 myself.

Sure, Searing Zone would team-kill our goblins too...

But goblins were never going to destroy turrets alone anyway, so it didn't matter.

Lane 2 with Pli, Lane 3 with Searing Zone.

That solved the unattended lane problem.

While those two lanes ran on auto-hunt, I just had to push Lane 1 first.

I returned to Lane 1.

Turret laser attack range was about 10 meters.

I'd heard attack priority favored units over Climbers, so normally the standard play was using goblins as shields while attacking turrets...

But I didn't need to do that.

I could attack from outside turret range with magic skills.

I stopped time and concentrated for 300 seconds.

I'd heard turrets had high defense and took quite a while to destroy...

Would the one-click Destruction Beam trick work on turrets too?

[You have destroyed the first turret in Lane 1!]

It worked.

I fired a full-charge Destruction Beam, blasted a hole clean through the turret, and it collapsed. Then the message appeared.

Destruction Beam really was strong...!

My Willpower dropped fast, so I stopped time again and recovered.

With Searing Zone still active in Lane 3, Willpower consumption was heavy.

If Willpower ran out, Searing Zone would deactivate, so I had to recover in time.

The second turrets standing like gatekeepers at the bridge entrance were a pair.

Destruction Beam was on cooldown, so I fired other skills, including Flame Strike.

Kwaaaaang!

I couldn't destroy them in one shot like with Destruction Beam, but chunks were breaking off, so the damage was landing well.

I kept indiscriminately bombarding the turrets while dealing with ogres.

Before long, the left turret collapsed and only the right remained.

'This is easier than I thought...'

Then I just had to push Lanes 2 and 3 the same way.

But smooth progress on Nightmare difficulty?

No way, right?

Sure, having three lanes was already plenty of Nightmare-style bullshit.

[You have destroyed the second turret in Lane 1!]

Soon the right turret collapsed too, and the second turrets were fully destroyed.

I left the bridge and entered the enemy base.

Only the core remained now.

A red core in the middle of the base.

Unlike monsters and turrets, the core had a health bar.

Destruction Beam was off cooldown, so I fired a full-charge Destruction Beam straight at the core...

Unlike the turret, the core didn't break even after taking the hit.

Its health dropped only a tiny bit. One percent.

Figures, the core couldn't be one-shot either.

I'd expected that, so I wasn't rattled.

I'd heard cores were impossible to destroy in one shot at every difficulty.

1% of health per second.

That was the fixed maximum damage you could deal to a core.

In other words, destroying one always took at least 100 seconds.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I started pounding the core with my mace.

Ogres spawned from a red portal right beside the core and got aggroed onto me, attacking.

I killed the ogres with Flame Strike and kept attacking the core.

The other lanes were already blocked, and as long as I handled the ogres on this lane while breaking the core, the time it took wasn't a problem.

So I kept shaving off 1% per second from the core's health.

Craaack!

After 100 seconds, cracks spread through the giant core and it began to collapse.

[You have destroyed the core in Lane 1!]

A message appeared.

But then...

"...Huh?"

My eyes widened.

The shattered core fragments suddenly floated back into the air.

They reassembled, regenerated, and returned to normal instantly.

[Wrong order!]

[Destroy all enemy cores in the designated order!]

[Penalty applied!]

[The number of summoned enemy monsters has doubled!]

[Enemy monsters have acquired Level 1 resistance!]

Ah...

So there was an order?

'Should've known.'

It had started.

Nightmare's trademark cheap shot: if you don't know, you get punished.

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