Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability - Chapter 87

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability

Chapter 87

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Floor 6 Hidden (1)

As I followed the knights, I looked around at my surroundings.

The interior of the building was clean.

It felt modern, which made this civilization seem fairly advanced.

Like Floor 4 Hidden.

To begin with, the knights' armor was not medieval in style. It looked more like some kind of mechanical design...

More importantly, the knights were not human either.

From the faces I could glimpse through the gaps in their helmets, each of them had three eyes. They were the same race as the noble-looking man who had spoken to me earlier.

I made a few guesses.

First, my current status was that of a slave.

And they had said I had put on an excellent match.

...A slave gladiator? A coliseum? Was it that kind of setup?

As we passed through the clean corridor and went farther underground, the surroundings turned musty.

The place we soon arrived at looked like a massive detention facility.

Only then did I finally see ordinary humans with two eyes.

A huge number of people were locked in cells in filthy conditions, shackled, men and women, young and old.

I was dragged to one of those cells.

Clank.

In front of the cell, a knight tried to put shackles on both my hands.

I wondered if I should resist even now, but for the moment I decided to stay still.

It felt like I should just go along with things at first. I had too little information.

If things went bad, I could just leave anyway.

"What are you doing? Get in."

I entered the cell with the shackles on.

All eyes turned to me.

After the knight left, only two guards remained outside the cell.

The people inside crowded around me and started speaking all at once.

"You're safe, Turo!"

"Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere...?"

...Turo?

Was that my name in this role?

They looked at me with worried eyes. One of them even looked like they were about to cry.

Judging by how friendly their reactions were, these people seemed to be on my side for now.

"You must be exhausted, Turo. Please get some rest. Who knows when those bastards will drag you out again..."

A man said that while glaring at the non-human guards outside the cell with hatred in his eyes.

Led by the others, I sat down against one side of the cell.

I needed to understand the background a little better...

The hostile side was the three-eyed race, and my side was humans like me.

The three-eyed race had imprisoned the humans, and I had just returned from a match.

That was all I knew so far.

"U-um, should I massage your shoulders, Turo? Or you can lie down with your head on my lap. You need to rest as comfortably as possible..."

The woman who had sat down beside me kept talking to me.

I checked the others' reactions, then whispered to her.

"Excuse me..."

"Yes, Turo!"

"N-no. Quietly, just lend me your ear for a second."

If I didn't know something, I had to ask directly.

"I'm a little confused right now."

"...Pardon?"

"I got hit in the head during the match. My memory is a mess, so could you tell me what's going on here?"

The woman stared at me in shock.

"D-do you have amnesia? What do we do...?!"

"I'm just a little confused. If you tell me, I think I might remember."

Would this work?

A moment later, she nodded with a stiff expression.

"A-all right. What exactly don't you remember?"

"How did we end up imprisoned here like this?"

"...F-from that far back? You don't remember any of it...?"

"Hurry."

When I pressed her, she started explaining.

She was not very good at explaining things, but not so bad that I couldn't understand. To sum it up, it was this.

We were a people called the Panrop, and that three-eyed race was an alien species called the Kalundi, invaders from outer space who had attacked this continent.

Countless nations and peoples had knelt before the overwhelming power of the Kalundi. They had quickly turned humans into slaves and taken over the world.

These matches were a form of Kalundi entertainment, a game for their amusement.

They made human slaves fight deadly matches and enjoyed watching them.

This time, they had dragged in a great number of slaves, divided them by ethnicity, and made them kill one another with the fate of their peoples on the line.

And I was the warrior who had entered the match as the representative of these people.

In other words, the lives of everyone locked in this detention facility depended on me.

"Hmm..."

"H-how is it? Do you remember anything now?"

"Yes, I think I remember a little."

After hearing the full explanation, I fell into thought.

I roughly understood the setting now.

Then the next thing was figuring out what the clear condition for this Hidden route was...

'He said it was the finals.'

That noble-looking man had said only the final match remained.

Then there was one match left.

Would I clear it just by winning the finals?

That would be nice if it were that simple...

But judging from my experience so far, Hidden routes were never that easy.

For now, I would have to wait until the final match began.

Ah, but wait...

'How long do I have to wait here?'

That was when I felt a sense of dread.

Time passing here was obviously passing outside too.

I had entered the Hidden route from my room.

If I couldn't get out for a whole day, my family would think something terrible had happened.

All the Hidden routes so far had unfolded right away, so I had never thought about a case like this...

I might end up wasting one valuable chance like an idiot.

From now on, would I have to enter Hidden routes only after saying I was going on a trip or something?

'It can't be helped.'

If I had to wait too long, I would just break out and wreck the place. That probably wasn't the right answer, though.

Fortunately, I didn't have to wait that long.

Clank.

About half a day passed, maybe.

Then the knights came back to the cell.

"Come out, No. 199."

At that, someone shouted in protest.

"...I-isn't this too much?! Turo hasn't even had a few hours to rest yet!"

The knight pulled his sword and started toward the person who had shouted.

That lunatic.

I got up and stepped in front of the knight.

"I'm sorry. I'll go."

The knight stared at me for a moment, then put his sword away and jerked his chin.

Leaving behind the anxious stares of the others, I followed the knights.

After leaving the detention facility, we arrived in front of a portal.

Beside it was a rack lined with several weapons.

The knight removed the shackles from my hands and said,

"Choose one weapon and enter."

...Was the final match starting now?

I hesitated briefly between a sword and a mace, then chose the sword.

After that, I stepped through the portal.

Flash!

The scene changed...

And I found myself standing in the middle of a huge arena that looked like a coliseum.

Waaaaah!

Cheers poured in from every direction.

Every spectator in the stands was one of those three-eyed Kalundi aliens.

[All right, it is finally time for the long-awaited final match!]

A voice rang out as if amplified through a microphone.

Feeling like a monkey in a cage, I looked at the opponent across from me.

Then the announcer spoke again.

[The final match is a one-on-one duel with no complicated rules! No. 199 and No. 21! The finest two warriors to survive out of more than 300 contestants will now fight with the fate of their peoples on the line!]

My opponent was a huge man holding an axe.

His stiff expression carried a grim sort of resolve.

There was a blue core behind me, and a red core behind him.

[Victory goes to whoever destroys the opponent's core first! After the match, there will be an event where all the slaves on the losing side are executed, so...]

The cheering grew even louder.

...This was just a clear attempt, but it still felt awful.

[All right, then! Let the match begin!]

The match started.

With a shout, the man charged at me.

Claaang!

I blocked his descending axe with my sword.

He kept pressing the attack with fierce momentum.

I continued blocking and dodging.

He was not weak, but he seemed to be around level 50 at most.

For me at level 80, he was easy to handle.

'What should I do...'

I could overwhelm him with a counterattack any time.

But seeing how easy this was... it really did not seem like simply winning the finals would clear it.

Was something else supposed to begin after the match? Should I wait and see?

Once I made up my mind, I counterattacked at once.

Baaang!

I swung hard, and the man's grip split open as his axe flew from his hand.

He was startled for a moment after losing his weapon, and I grabbed his arm and threw him.

"Ghk...!"

Leaving the man slammed into the ground, I walked toward his core.

The crowd went quiet for a moment, then erupted in cheers.

The fallen man hurriedly got back up and rushed at me again.

I grabbed him again, threw him aside, and started smashing his core.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The man desperately tried to stop me from breaking it.

I could read the despair on his face and guess how he felt.

He could not afford to give up either.

If he lost, all the people on his side would die.

But I couldn't lose on purpose either.

I kept flinging him away and finished destroying the red core.

Crack!

Soon the man's core shattered.

The match ended too easily, and boos and cheers rang out from the stands at the same time.

Then another voice echoed through the arena, amplified.

"Silence."

There were two highest seats on either side of the coliseum-like stands.

A Kalundi man seated in one of them had risen and spoken.

At that single word, the entire arena fell silent.

Then the man continued.

"I, Patoum, third prince of the Kalundi Empire, commend your victory."

"..."

"No. 199, what is your name?"

I answered.

"My name is Turo."

"Turo, as promised, all the members of your captured people shall live. In addition, as the winner of this match, you shall be freed from slavery and granted Grade 2 citizenship in the Kalundi Empire."

Cheers broke out across the arena again.

Citizenship or whatever...

I quietly watched to see how this would go next.

Then that prince spoke again.

"You may take pride in yourself. As the champion, is there anything you wish to say?"

...Something I wanted to say?

It was not like I had anything in particular.

"Thank you."

So I just answered with a word of thanks.

[You have failed to clear the hidden route on Nightmare difficulty Floor 6. (2/3)]

[You are being removed from the Tower.]

What?

I got kicked out of the Tower and returned to my room.

I sat down in my chair, dumbfounded.

"...What?"

Why had that failed?

What had I even done?

I went back over the moment I failed.

The prince had asked if I had anything to say, and I answered thank you...

Then the failure message appeared immediately.

...Was that the problem?

Did I have to answer something else?

"So I told you to just kill them all. Hand your body over, and I shall slaughter every last one of those Kalundi or whatever they are."

I said in disbelief,

"You want me to ruin the clear? Why do you keep telling me to kill everyone?"

This guy said he had been a Nightmare Climber too, so how had he ever cleared things?

"Why bother with such things? Whether it cleared or not, I just killed them all."

"...There are rewards on the line."

"Trifles like skills and items are of no use to me. My power has already reached the level of a demigod."

Ignoring the raving Demon King, I sank into thought.

Since the failure message had appeared the moment I answered, the answer really did seem to be the key...

But what exactly was I supposed to say there?

After thinking for a long time, I sorted out my thoughts and went outside.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm meeting friends for drinks. I might be late."

[Would you like to enter Nightmare difficulty Floor 6?]

After heading out and getting a motel room, I entered again.

All right, let's try attempt two.

I cleared the early part, got dragged by the knights to the cell, came back out, and entered the final arena.

I subdued the same pitiful man from the other side again and smashed his core.

"...I, Patoum, third prince of the Kalundi Empire, commend your victory."

I had returned to the conversation with the prince again.

"As the champion, is there anything you wish to say?"

The prince asked the same question.

"...Could you give me a different reward instead of citizenship?"

At that, the audience stirred.

The prince smiled as if intrigued and asked,

"A different reward? What is it you want? The survival of your people has already been guaranteed separately from your reward."

I glanced at the man kneeling at one side of the arena in despair.

"I ask that you show mercy so the people on the other side may live as well. That is the reward I want instead of citizenship."

What was Floor 6's clear condition?

I had thought about it a lot.

The only background information I had been given was that this was a match with the survival of each side's people at stake...

Then maybe the answer was simply there.

Maybe the clear condition was not just saving my own side, but saving the people on the other side too.

There was no way the clear condition was killing all these aliens like the Demon King said. That was not even realistically possible.

"...You want the opposing people to survive as well?"

The prince stroked his chin.

"Compared to citizenship, it is a reward so trivial it hardly deserves mention. But it runs counter to this match's core premise, that only one people may survive... Hmm, this is difficult."

"..."

"What does the princess think?"

On the seat across the arena, the Kalundi woman sitting there stood up at the prince's question.

She looked down at me and answered with a faint smile.

"I like the bold spirit of this slave, Brother. Are you giving me the choice?"

"If it pleases you, then so be it."

"Then this girl will make her decision by tomorrow. Until then, how about postponing the execution of the slaves?"

The prince nodded.

"Very well. Turo, until this time tomorrow, my younger sister Princess Latium will decide whether to accept your request. Until then, the execution of the slaves on the losing side will be postponed."

No failure message appeared before my eyes.

Inside, I cheered.

'Did it work...?'

So this really was the right answer?

I turned my head and met eyes with the man from the other side.

A moment ago he had been in despair, but now he was staring at me in shock.

He bowed his head as if thanking me. I gave him a light nod in return.

The crowd was growing noisy as the spectators seemed to be leaving the arena...

Then the knights approached me and said,

"Come with us."

I was taken somewhere by the knights just like that.

"If you meant to save both sides, you could have done it by slaughtering every one of these three-eyed vermin. You are making things harder for yourself."

At the Demon King's voice, I answered in my head.

"This is how you clear Hidden routes, Demon King-nim. You can't just brute-force your way through them."

"Silence."

"Then stop jinxing it. Can't you see this is going very smoothly?"

But where were they taking me?

We entered a palace-like building and soon arrived in front of a lavish door.

The knight escorting me knocked on it, then stepped back.

Then the door opened.

Inside was a large, splendid room decorated with all kinds of glittering jewels.

And inside that room was...

the princess.

"Enter."