WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Tower at Hell Difficulty ◈
Episode 103
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Almost instinctively, I checked the nearby cameras first.
Maybe because they were doing illegal work, they didn't even have any decent cameras.
That meant I could negotiate without worry.
"Ugh! Get off me! How can you treat someone like this..."
The boss I had pinned beneath my knee struggled.
But there was no way the boss could overpower a real hunter's strength.
The boss wasn't even a hunter.
"From now on, anyone who moves without my permission gets chopped up and fed to the rabbits."
"..."
The boss beneath my knee immediately went still.
Maybe my voice had sounded sincere.
Of course, I wasn't actually going to feed this garbage to rabbits.
Heentteok and the rabbits at my house only ate carefully selected hay.
Apparently, feeding them nothing but pellets was bad for their health, so these days I mixed the two half and half.
"What do you guys do?"
A yellow sports car parked in the corner seemed to be staring at us.
They must have made quite a bit of money already.
Naturally, they didn't stay still just because I told them to.
"You bastards... Aagh!"
A piece of metal Yuki threw struck the leg of one of them trying to run away.
There was plenty of stuff nearby for her to throw.
Though it took a hunter's strength to pull that off.
"Didn't you hear the team leader?"
"A-Are you people crazy? I'm suing you for this!"
"You're going to sue us because you got caught scamming people and got roughed up?"
Just arguing with these people drained all my energy.
They made money by breaking the law, and now they wanted the law's protection.
It really would have been easier to stab them all with a dagger and leave.
Then the police contacted us.
Kim Yuna answered in my place.
"Ah, they caught the person who went to the bank."
"Really?"
They must have been using borrowed-name bank accounts, so that person was bound to get caught.
Naturally, they had withdrawn cash.
If they transferred it to another account, that account would be frozen too once they were caught.
"How much did they seize?"
"Five hundred thousand won."
"... What?"
These people had been bragging earlier like they'd just pulled off some massive job.
Had they really been acting like that after making only five hundred thousand won?
It was good that the victims hadn't lost much money...
But it was still a little ridiculous.
I lightly tapped the boss beneath my knee as I spoke.
The boss's chest had been pressed down, leaving them unable to breathe properly. They finally sucked in a ragged breath.
That made them much more obedient.
"How much have you guys made so far?"
"Not much! Around twenty million won..."
"Twenty million?"
It was a lot of money.
But there were quite a few people here, and split between them, I wondered if it would even come out to minimum wage.
It wasn't exactly a career with prospects, either.
Could they be lowballing the amount?
That was my first thought.
"Hey, tell me the truth. Your channel still has fifty thousand subscribers."
"Most of those are fake! We paid a company to boost them in the first place... You know how saturated online videos are these days! We haven't even been running this business for long!"
That made sense.
The field was so saturated that they'd gone as far as stealing my photos.
Still... I couldn't forgive them.
These bastards had more subscribers than I did before I became a hunter.
Of course, my subscribers hadn't included that many fake accounts.
"Then what's with that sports car? That thing must've cost at least a hundred million won."
"That? I bought it on installments! If you're filming videos and uploading them, you need something to show off, don't you?"
That was true.
If you were selling success, you at least needed to show yourself working from a fancy office and driving a nice car.
Plenty of people didn't even do that much, but those people had no business ethics.
Still, the boss had obviously bought a car they had always wanted, then gone into debt using the business as an excuse.
"Then where did all the money you've made go?"
"I used almost all of it to pay the installments!"
"Hmm. Installments?"
This might make compensating the victims unexpectedly easy.
I reached a simple conclusion.
"Then sell it."
"... What?"
"Sell that car, pay the victims back, and figure out the rest yourselves."
"N-No... Then I'll still have installments left to pay!"
"You should've lived honestly, then."
The boss's underlings looked completely fed up.
"This is practically making us cash out credit cards..."
Come to think of it, it really was like forcing them to cash out credit cards.
The boss finally snapped.
"Are you crazy? I can't do that! Do you have any idea how much the installment interest is..."
They had probably financed it over at least one or two years, so naturally the interest would be huge.
Even if they had barely driven the car and it hadn't depreciated much, it would still be a heavy burden.
But nobody had told these people to scam anyone.
Did I really need to care about that?
"Or go to prison for fraud. You've already taken twenty million won, so someone must have filed a report by now."
"No one's reported us yet! We're still paying dividends! I'm serious!"
Ah... they were still paying dividends?
Well, early on in scams like this, they often did pay dividends so people would spread good word of mouth.
Once people received the dividends, they invested them again anyway, so the scammers practically lost nothing.
Then they took everything and ran at the end.
Yuki spoke from beside me.
"Then you can pay it back by working as hunters."
"... What?"
"If you work properly as hunters, you can make that much in no time. Just do exactly what you talked about in your videos."
Was this selling success to a success seller?
Kim Yuna egged them on as well.
"That's right. You can make that much quickly just by going to the seventh floor. Didn't you say it was nothing?"
"Sell the car first. What you do as hunters after that is up to you."
"Ugh..."
As the boss squirmed helplessly, the others slowly started backing away.
"Then, can we leave now?"
"You guys are accomplices too. Shouldn't you do something?"
"No, we haven't even properly received our first paycheck yet..."
"That's right! The only thing the boss did was buy us food a few times!"
"You still accepted the meals."
The police arrived soon after, and it seemed like things would finally end well...
Unfortunately, they didn't.
Honestly, I had been half certain from the moment I entered this place.
"Wait, search over there too."
"What? That's just the office. They've already told us everything..."
"I don't think they started out by running a success-selling scam."
"Gasp!"
Their faces turned pale.
Yuki came over and asked, "Why did you think that?"
"That kind of success-selling scam might look simple, but it's a sophisticated fraud that takes effort and keeps up with the latest trends..."
Most large-scale scams were sophisticated crimes.
But if you didn't actually have anything or know anything, wouldn't you start with something like drug courier work?
Even this took accumulated know-how.
Sure enough, once they searched the office, their other crimes started pouring out.
"Drugs, burner phones, borrowed-name accounts... You guys really did all kinds of things."
"You really work hard at living, don't you."
It was time for them to use that passion somewhere proper.
They cursed at me as the police dragged them away.
"There really are all kinds of idiots."
"Team leader, I posted a notice on the channel."
"Thank you."
Thanks to that, I even filmed a video.
After returning to the workshop, I started modifying the remaining batteries.
Just as the work was finally nearing completion, Bellion contacted me.
[Newbie. The fourth piece of Death Priest equipment is complete. I'll give it to you when we meet later.]
"Oh, thank you."
[And I think it's about time we gathered... What do you want to do?]
"How much time do we have?"
[At most, about five days.]
"That's plenty. Give me three days. I'm wrapping up some work."
[All right. We'll meet at the coordinates in three days.]
The coordinates Bellion sent were in the Necromancers' dimension we had visited last time.
Were we gathering there and attacking right away?
After making every possible preparation, my team gathered in front of the Tower.
"Whew, we're going again."
"Let's not overdo it this time. Think of it as just taking a look around..."
"For something like that, didn't we prepare a little too thoroughly?"
Sang Hajun, holding his new weapon, grumbled.
"It's only in case something happens."
"Modus was brought back by a Necromancer named Mortis, right? What happens if Mortis is killed?"
Kim Yuna asked a very good question.
"Modus is a Death Knight. A self-aware highest-ranking undead."
A Death Knight was comparable to a Lich.
Even without a Necromancer, one could act independently for a very long time.
"I heard someone at Modus's level can make a contract with a new Necromancer."
"So they were bound by a contract?"
"That's right."
I wondered what the operation would look like.
"It's time. Let's go."
Flash!
The Death Priests decided to gather separately and go on their own, like last time.
It wasn't even a city this time, yet the air was still stale and unpleasant.
I spotted Gillius first and greeted him.
"Hello."
"... Welcome."
He nodded and made room beside him.
Bellion, who had been nearby, ran over on his short legs.
"You arrived exactly on time. Here, take this first."
The Death Priest equipment Bellion had made was in a completely unexpected form.
Something dangled from a short rod.
[Death Priest’s Lantern: Reveals the light of souls, making souls easier to see.]
Was it a scouting item?
It had sounded like something essential for clearing the thirteenth floor.
"Oh, can I try it?"
"Of course."
Bellion stepped back with a very proud expression and watched.
When I raised the iron lantern, light flickered inside it.
The next moment, the nearby scenery was instantly covered in gray, leaving behind only lights of different sizes.
It was easy to tell those were the lights of souls.
For one thing, Gillius beside me was glowing incredibly brightly.
It meant his soul was large and powerful.
The other Death Priests and my team members were also quite bright.
What about farther away?
I stepped slightly outside the gathering area and held the lantern high.
Whoosh...
I could clearly see even beings unimaginably far away.
Its search range surpassed even Four Seasons.
"It's incredibly wide."
"On the thirteenth floor, you use that to avoid it."
"It?"
Something even I, a Death Priest, needed to avoid.
Was it a boss so powerful that clearing it was impossible?
But that was strange.
No matter how strong a boss was, it was over if I landed one proper stab.
If they were telling me to avoid it...
'An immortality gimmick? No. If it were just an immortality gimmick, I could deal with it using the dagger.'
Something that never ended no matter how many times you killed it...
Or something whose real body was hidden somewhere else, like the Great Temple boss on the eleventh floor.
If it was something like that, I would need this to avoid it.
That gave me a rough idea.
"Thank you. I'll put it to good use."
"Hmph. Of course you will."
Click.
I felt the lantern bind itself to my soul.
It wasn't such a powerful artifact, so Soul Binding probably wouldn't have much effect.
"By the way, what's the plan for Modus's side?"
When I asked, Gillius gathered everyone and explained.
"The core of this operation is separating Modus and Mortis."
"If those two are together, they're absurdly troublesome."
"But... will Modus even leave Mortis's side? They're always stuck together like glue. They can't live without each other."
Modus would naturally consider Mortis extremely important.
He had even come himself to gather Regeneration Spore Mushrooms for her last time.
Gillius gave a small nod.
"Recently, the territory those bastards rule has grown too large. They have two major cities alone, and more than ten places when you include the smaller territories."
"We're attacking all of them at the same time..."
"That's right."
No one knew where Modus would appear among those places.
If we were unlucky enough to run into him, we would fight with everything we had.
It was an operation perfectly suited to Hunter Lords with poor teamwork.
"Even if Modus doesn't appear, it won't be a bad outcome. We can greatly reduce his forces."
This was the kind of operation that couldn't be stopped even if they knew about it.
Of course, an alliance of Hunter Lords couldn't be relied on.
If time dragged on without dealing a significant blow to the enemy, we would gradually be put at a disadvantage.
"Mortis will definitely remain in her castle, right?"
"That's right. Modus won't allow her to go on an expedition."
Gillius nodded grimly.
"While Modus is away, we'll attack Mortis's castle."
"Ha... As expected, we have the most dangerous role. Modus is at least out on an expedition, but Mortis's side will have an elite undead army and traps everywhere."
"That's why we have to step forward."
Then a Death Priest who seemed relatively junior raised a hand and spoke.
How did I know?
They had raised a hand.
It wasn't like they needed to advertise being junior.
"If we kill Mortis first, won't Modus run away?"
"He will. He's a coward who values his own life above all else. Mortis is only his tool. But his forces will collapse as well."
Apparently, she was one unusually important tool.
We marched at an easy pace to join the armies of the other Hunter Lords.
Footnotes:
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