WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Climbing the Tower with Time-Stop Ability
Chapter 98
──────
Nightmare Floor 7 (5)
[Floor 7 has been cleared on all difficulties.]
[The Tower is calling new personnel.]
I was moved to the Reward Room.
My frozen, shattered body began to heal.
The frost melted away, and my separated upper and lower body aligned on their own as if time were rewinding, then instantly reattached and regenerated.
The Demon King got up.
I said in admiration,
"...Demon King-nim, you're pretty incredible."
Even so, I hadn't expected us to clear it this easily.
The Demon King let out a snort.
"Making a fuss over so little. I could not use even a speck of my true body's power."
I see.
Anyway, the Demon King had totally carried me.
"Demon King-nim."
"..."
"But you have to give it back now."
"Tch."
The Demon King looked incredibly reluctant to hand my body back so obediently.
Even so, he didn't dig in and refuse.
Soon, control of my body returned to me.
Even when the Demon King was in control, it wasn't as if I couldn't feel my body at all, but everything had felt strangely distant.
I checked the reward.
A purple Skill Stone appeared.
It was Epic grade.
Looks like by Floor 7, Epic-grade rewards started showing up even without a hidden clear.
I read the skill description.
[Skill: Hellfire Eruption (Epic)]
Erupts a powerful pillar of hellfire within 20 meters. Casting requires 30 to 150 seconds of mental concentration. The longer the concentration time, the greater the skill's power and range.
Classification: Magic-Type
Willpower Cost: 700
Cooldown: 2 minutes
"Oh."
A magic-type skill had appeared.
Better yet, it was fire-elemental.
With the Zone 3 boss bracelet and the flame-style passive, fire magic was the most efficient option for me whenever possible.
It boosted the power, after all.
And judging by the description... it was a charge-up skill similar to Destruction Beam?
[You have learned 'Skill: Hellfire Eruption (Epic)'.]
With a name like hellfire, I had high hopes for its power.
It would be weaker than Destruction Beam, but that still meant I'd gained another burst-damage skill.
Maybe because an Epic-grade skill had appeared, there were no other rewards, but I was satisfied since I'd gotten a good skill.
[Difficulty: Nightmare]
[Floor: 8th Floor]
[Level: 95]
[Willpower: 5,000/5,000]
[Skills: Destruction Beam (Epic+), Subspace (Epic), Hellfire Eruption (Epic), Sixth Sense (Rare+) (+3), Teleport (Rare+), Rapid Regeneration (Rare+), Searing Zone (Rare+), Lesser Flame Refinement (Rare+)...]
[Nightmare]
Population: 575,092
Time Limit: 1 year 20 days 15 hours 4 minutes 16 seconds
Reached Floor: 8th Floor
I checked my Status Window and confirmed that the Time Limit had increased too.
Feeling relieved that I'd overcome another crisis, I let out a sigh.
Clearing Floor 7 had been brutal too.
If the Demon King hadn't helped at the end, I really might have failed.
"...But is it okay to clear it like this?"
It felt like I'd cheated my way through it.
Wasn't that why it had tried to erase the Demon King, saying it would correct the error?
Maybe it had somehow failed because I'd stopped time.
But even after we'd openly cleared it with the Demon King's power, why was it quiet now...?
Or maybe it couldn't interfere anymore?
There was no point thinking about something I couldn't know, so I stopped.
Well, we cleared it, so that was what mattered.
A win was a win.
"Anyway, thanks, Demon King-nim."
- If you're thankful...
"Man, I'm exhausted. I should get out and rest now."
There were a lot of things I wanted to ask the Demon King, especially about the power he'd shown.
But I was tired.
I'd been through enough, so I wanted to rest first...
* * *
In the 21st century, or perhaps in all the remaining history humanity had left, the 20th had become the most symbolic date of all.
Whenever that day came around each year, a day the UN had even officially designated as the Day of Destiny, people everywhere prayed desperately for one person's success.
[Fire Ant: Everyone's praying hard, right?]
[Shane: I'm nervous, so nervous. Please let it happen again this time too! Person123-nim!]
[Kalguksu: He's going to succeed anyway, so what's there to be nervous about? Even if it hits 0 days now, I don't even flinch. If anything, it makes me laugh lol]
[Emperor: Stop talking crap and just pray quietly, old man.]
[Lexidr: Just believe, you unbelievers. The path of salvation He walks knows no failure.]
[Firepower: But isn't the Tower making a proposal this time? There's no global notice.]
Not just the news media, but all kinds of talk shows got noisy around this time too.
"Then Arlo, what do you think will happen with Floor 7 this time?"
On the podcast show The Jude Noise, host Jude smiled and asked the man sitting across from him.
The man was Arlo, making his third appearance as a regular guest. He was the doomsdayer who used to insist that Person123 would fail and the world would eventually end.
Despite all the mockery and ridicule he got from people, he had always stubbornly stuck to his pessimistic view, but...
"He will succeed."
Arlo answered with certainty.
That was old news now. He had already started gradually changing his stance back around the Floor 4 clear.
"Oh? That's surprising. Has your mind changed too, Arlo?"
"Don't tease me, Jude. Though I suppose that's why you've invited me back here for the third time."
Jude burst out laughing.
"That's right," Arlo said. "My opinion has completely changed now."
"What changed your mind, Arlo?"
"I remember saying something like this when I came on this show before. That Nightmare was a sixty-sided die, and I didn't want to believe it would keep landing on the right result."
Jude nodded.
"You did say that. I remember."
"And how many times has that result already come up now?"
"Nightmare has currently been cleared through Floor 6, so... I suppose that means it came up five times."
"Exactly. Can we still call that coincidence?"
Arlo smiled and slowly shook his head.
"Now anyone has no choice but to admit it. Person123 is extraordinary. It isn't chance or luck. It means he himself is extraordinary.
I used to say miracles don't happen more than once, but that was my mistake. The miracle wasn't that floor after floor kept getting cleared. His very existence was the miracle given to humanity."
"So your position really has changed completely?"
"Isn't it all being proven by results? Every year, Person123 clears Nightmare right before our eyes. It is something only he can do. Even Spain's Alejandro, who raised expectations by clearing Nightmare at incredible speed, couldn't overcome the barrier of being the first."
Arlo spoke with growing passion.
"Ever since Person123 set the date as the 20th, the world, which used to be total chaos, has been growing astonishingly stable every year. Crime rates have plummeted, and a huge number of social problems have been solved.
We're all feeling that atmosphere, aren't we? Now, even when the Time Limit approaches, there are far more people holding onto hope than people falling into despair. Isn't that truly incredible?"
Of course, doomsday believers still existed.
There were still people who thought Person123 would fail someday, and there were religions that regarded the Tower as divine judgment and worshiped it as a god.
But compared to the early days after the Tower first appeared, they were only a minority. Far more people now held onto the hope that they would be able to keep living.
It was all because Person123 had given people faith through overwhelming ability and selfless actions devoted solely to the peace of the world.
"It really is incredible. I completely agree."
Jude pointed at the rosary-like bracelet Arlo was wearing.
"Come to think of it, Arlo, that caught my eye earlier... isn't that the emblem of the Person123 Church?"
Arlo raised his wrist with a slightly embarrassed smile.
"That's right. I joined too."
"Haha, so you've become a fervent believer now."
"Well, it's not really a heavily religious group. Honestly, I even feel like every human being should probably join..."
After the Cheonin Church scandal in Korea, there had been a brief period when religious groups connected to Person123 lost momentum, but those had only been shady underground cults.
The Salvation Church, the foundation of the Person123 Church, was still actively growing even now. Larger and larger.
"I believe it. Humanity's miracle will once again gift us another year of life. I'm certain this year will be the same."
Meanwhile, in Times Square, New York.
With only 15 hours left until Nightmare's 20th-day Time Limit, a huge crowd had already gathered there as well.
People who had come out to pray for success, believers from the Person123 Church praying in earnest, reporters roaming around to cover them...
As time passed, the crowd kept growing larger, and then a few people shouted.
"...Success!"
"Floor 7 was cleared! Waaaaah!"
The shouts of the climbers who saw the notice first became the spark.
The people packed into the square erupted into a massive cheer. Everyone hugged one another in joy and threw their arms around each other's shoulders.
It was a much earlier clear than the previous floors. This year, people barely even had time to worry.
[Score: Another year to live! I knew it, damn it!]
[Hedgehog: Ah... thank you for saving humanity again this year.]
[Dayoung: Honestly, now it just feels like the obvious result lol]
[Snowman: That's what I told you. You just have to believe and wait.]
[Gugu: One person is really holding up the whole world.]
That made seven floors.
For Person123, there was no such thing as failure.
And as Nightmare got cleared floor by floor, people's faith kept growing stronger too.
But how long this moment of joy would continue every year...
No one could know.
* * *
"This year too, Person123 has saved humanity. Reports say Nightmare difficulty Floor 7 was cleared at around 5 a.m. today..."
Kim Seo-a, who got up late that morning, was surprised as she watched the news.
While she had been asleep, Nightmare Floor 7 had been cleared at dawn.
Floor 6 had also been challenged during the day and cleared earlier than the previous floors, and Floor 7 had been another early clear.
"Haa..."
Kim Seo-a felt her heart pounding and let out a relieved sigh.
Click.
Her bedroom door opened, and Kim Seo-hyeon came out to the living room too.
Kim Seo-a said excitedly,
"They say Floor 7 was cleared!"
"Yeah, I saw."
Kim Seo-hyeon glanced at the TV screen and muttered, "Made it through this year too."
Then he went to the kitchen, drank some water, and headed right back into his room.
His reaction was always the same, calm and indifferent.
Kim Seo-a had never once seen Kim Seo-hyeon look happy after hearing that Nightmare had been cleared.
"..."
Come to think of it, she hadn't managed it again in the end.
This year, she had wanted to make sure Kim Seo-hyeon didn't skip out so the whole family could pray together in the living room for the Nightmare clear.
But every single time Nightmare got cleared, Kim Seo-hyeon was either outside the house, or it happened at dawn while he was asleep.
Of course it was a coincidence. It had to be, but...
Kim Seo-a stared at Kim Seo-hyeon's bedroom door.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
